Tcl, esp. in its form of &quot;tclsh&quot;.<p>No, I&#x27;m serious. While Tcl has some limitations, it can also be much closer to actual shell programming due to its syntactic flexibility (for example, the DSL to write shell pipelines embodied in the &quot;exec&quot; command).<p>Plus, there&#x27;s a fairly simple standalone implementation in the form of JimTcl [1], which is used (e.g.) as the configuration tool for autosetup [2].<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jim.tcl.tk&#x2F;index.html&#x2F;doc&#x2F;www&#x2F;www&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jim.tcl.tk&#x2F;index.html&#x2F;doc&#x2F;www&#x2F;www&#x2F;index.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;msteveb.github.io&#x2F;autosetup&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;msteveb.github.io&#x2F;autosetup&#x2F;</a>