I generally prefer a simpler solution to a problem if possible. This comes especially true with scripting. If I write a small script for something like say my website I generally have three requirements of the system:
- No dependencies outside the language
- Language is interpreted (I don't want to worry about build dependencies)
- Comes preinstalled on systems I care about
I primarily work on Linux systems and very rarely don't. Therefore, the simplest scripting language for me to write in is Bash. In fact, I generally reach for that first. If what I need to do is sufficiently complicated, then the next language I'll reach for is Python.
Though that begs the question, what is sufficiently complicated? Here are some tasks that I don't think Bash is suited for:
- Data Parsing
- I know `ack`, `sed`, and `grep` exist, but they're complicated and unintuitive to use. We write programs for *people first*, computers second.
- Harder to parse JSON. The program `jq` exists but that's not part of the GNU coreutils.
- Math
- I believe `bc` is the easiest command to use to process arithmetical expressions. Though this also then involves constructing strings to pass into bc. For example: `result=$(echo "1 + 5" | bc)`
- Slawomir's functional programming in [bash library](https://github.com/ssledz/bash-fun) makes it more bearable. ([My fork](https://github.com/Brandon-Rozek/bash-fun))
