For sure. It's decades of legacy, many different versions, footguns and caveats everywhere. I personally like to tinker with it, but I also have to look up basic things like "how to write a for loop" or "how to compare numbers" constantly.
" known or understood by very few; mysterious; secret; obscure; esoteric "
And as an example for something arcane, the Sanskrit language is brought up. I think this is a perfect example to compare with shell scripting. Sanskrit is from an era where it was more common, but nowadays it's usage is more of a specialty. The rules are understood and public, easily accessible technically, but it's hard work to get good at it. Since it has a long history, it has many variants, both over time, and depending on locality. There is a kind of common form of it that people can use for everyday matters, that is much easier than knowing all of the rules and cases.
I think it's a good argument that shell scripting is arcane, even by investigating the definition of it. Not to mention that in the original post, it was just postulated that shell scripting is a bit weird, and maybe not the best tool for the job, a kind of a lighthearted jab at the language, and at the practices people sometimes do.
Shell scripting is not "known or understood by very few", it's widely understood by a great many people. It's one of the most common programming languages. It is by definition not arcane. It simply can't be with how widespread and popular it is.
The comparison with Sanskrit doesn't make sense, given shell scripting is still in wide use currently.
It's fine to think shell scripting is a bit weird, but it's just absolutely and unambiguous wrong to say it is arcane, especially by the definition.
"Arcane" means "requiring secret or mysterious knowledge". I think there are quite a few features of bash that qualify as arcane. I've been writing shell scripts for decades and I still have to look up how to do certain things often enough.
And if you want to write in portable shell, remembering all the rules and things you can and cannot do feels somewhat arcane to me.
Sure, but they aren't really writing what I would consider a script/program under typical usage. Obviously that's a fuzzy definition if you start piping things together, but I'm talking more about control flow / parsing argument / etc. Doing that in bash correctly does require arcane knowledge and skills. It is immensely difficult to not shoot yourself in the foot.
I think it’s definitely a contributing factor. Folks conflate simplicity with familiarity. It also just feels good to apply knowledge you worked hard to gain.
