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Comment by futharkshill | Hacker News Reader

Could you tell us, why would you choose to use Bash compared to other programming languages if you are making complex programs?

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Not OP, but I would say that we, regular Bash users, don't really write complex programs in Bash, even though it depends on what you call "complex". Some of our programs can be pretty long, and we can do more within Bash than some programmers know (eg. the arrays/associative arrays features, the vast parameter expansion options etc.), so no, we aren't bound to some 100-line-max rule, if that's what you had in mind.

Bash (and other shells) are very good at working with other programs and using the filesystem. It's true you have to know many idioms, but once you're there, you can be quite productive for these kinds of tasks.

For me, anything that I couldn't write without a guide is too complex. Like a function. Or a conditional.

Subjectivity of what is complex is the problem here, which means that regular Bash users regularly write programs that are complex to me. And I'd much rather use something with less footguns, even if the good parts of the shell become less easy.

So true. The shell encourages one to reason about and simplify workflows by leveraging programs that already solve the complex problems. I'm continually amazed at how many lines of code I can replace with a Bash one liner.

I think your parent poster is implying that they don’t use Bash for complex programs.

I believe that was the implication, too.

One's level of expertise will determine what is "too complex for $SHELL". When that point is reached, it's time to switch to something else, not time to add more features to $SHELL.

(If, when something becomes too complex for $SHELL, you switch to assembly, you might be too much of a $SHELL expert!)

Like I said in the last paragraph: I would not.

If the bash program evolves to span multiple files and lots of lines, I usually switch to ansible/ruby/clojure

What usually happens in my case is I start off writing a simple program in Bash, then it unexpectedly becomes complicated as I add more and more to it.

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