"Scripting" is a list of commands and parameters that are to be executed one after the next in sequential order. Bash also has additional structures like if statements, while loops, and functions ...

That's because the idiomatic way wouldn't be to use a bash function, but ... if it will take actual programming to make it work, I don't much care for working in bash anymore.

Bash functions, unlike functions in most programming languages do not allow you to return a value to the caller. When a bash function ends its return value is its status: zero for success, non-zero ...

If you are a traditional programmer, using bash for scripting may seem limiting sometimes ... issues are because some of the advanced functions in bash are arcane or confusing.

We often read (including in the book Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide by Mendel Cooper) that if we pass variable names as parameters to functions, they will be treated as string literals and cannot be ...

It is easy to dismiss bash — the typical Linux shell program — as just a command prompt that allows scripting. Bash, however, is a full-blown programming language. I wouldn’t presume to tell ...