[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone else having a problem with bash?

[Martin Vaeth <martin@mvath.de>]

Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> As a
> scripting language, Bash is probably better

This is not true, either: Although finally bash took some of the
features of zsh (arrays, regular expression matching, etc.) there
are still many features missing in bash (extended globbing, many
variable and array operations etc.)

> although if I need that
> much functionality in a script I would use Python instead of any shell
> variant.

That's the mqin reason - together with the fact that bash is more
widespread - why zsh is not used as much as it deserves:
When you write a complex program you should probably use a
high-level language to start with unless there are very good
reasons why you can't (e.g. longer startup time etc.)
(I would prefer perl over python as it appears to me to be similar
with zsh vs. bash concerning features, although in the perl-python
case it is not so clear since the languages have also some
"philosophical" differences: For large projects it may be an
*advantage* to have less language features, so that they are
not misused by badly skilled team members...)