> I haven't seen any other tool ever have so many pitfalls.

I haven't seen any other tool with so much general utility and availability.

> to loop over a string array and print its contents

Is incredibly easy in bash and bash like shells. As highlighted the issue is that tools like 'ls' don't create "a string array." They create one giant string that has to be parsed. The rules in the shell are different than in other languages but it /will/ do most of the parsing for you, or all of it, if you do it carefully.

This is a fine tradeoff. As evidenced by it's wide usage and lack of convincing replacements.