Yeah, I also don't look at things like

``` trim_string() { # Usage: trim_string " example string " : "${1#"${1%%[![:space:]]}"}" : "${_%"${_##[![:space:]]}"}" printf '%s\n' "$_" } ```

and think: "I should use bash more".

Bash is nice for making simple things simple but for complicated things it's just shitty. I used to think that this is due to the complicated quoting rules which make the simple things simple but tcl does a much better job at that.

In either case I prefer the clean rules of a Python or Perl for anything larger.