I disagree. Shell scripts are great for automating system tasks — for sysadminy type stuff, including tasks with high complexity with nested loops and conditionals.<p>A scripting language like those you mentioned is great for if you need to run your script on systems you don&#x27;t control, or you need it to be cross platform, or you&#x27;d describe what you&#x27;re doing as creating software rather than automating tasks.<p>No scripting language can ever integrate with the host system quite as well as shell scripts can. Sure, shell scripts make it easy to shoot yourself in the foot, but then can&#x27;t you say the same of at least perl and ruby?<p>I don&#x27;t really see many good use cases for this library though. By the time you&#x27;d use it you should probably move on to something else.