That's more or less what Perl is (a more coherent language).
Perl may look ugly, but it doesn't have the escaping problems that Unix shells have. And most of the usual shell features (listing files, launching commands, etc...) are built-in. It is also available in almost all Unix systems, maybe even more so than bash.
> It is also available in almost all Unix systems, maybe even more so than bash.
That's a bit of a deceitful claim - maybe bash isn't on every UNIX box but /bin/sh sure is along with awk and cut and all the other associated helpers.
Even if perl is installed its likely missing all the cpan modules that make it useful which isn't great if the host doesn't have carte blanche access to install whatever it feels like.
As a sysadmin/devops person knowing the utilities that are guaranteed to be installed is essential, especially now that docker images trimmed of any fat are trendy for bogus security ideals.
Perl may look ugly, but it doesn't have the escaping problems that Unix shells have. And most of the usual shell features (listing files, launching commands, etc...) are built-in. It is also available in almost all Unix systems, maybe even more so than bash.