&gt; No scripting language can ever integrate with the host system quite as well as shell scripts can.<p>What is the basis for this? Shell script is a scripting language (more precisely, a set of scripting languages with similar features.) The difference between <i>shell</i> scripting languages and other scripting languages is that the former are optimized around the need to scale down to a convenient line-by-line way to work with the system in a REPL; while the others may support work in a REPL it is not what they are optimized for.<p>There&#x27;s no real reason why other scripting languages can&#x27;t integrate with the system as well as shell languages.