Take a look at the following summary and consider the things it could replace.
Summary
BashDiff is a patch against Bash-3.0 shell, incorporating many useful features from Awk, Python, Zsh, Ksh, and others. It implements in the main core
and as dynamically loadable builtins
- new brace expansion {a..b} --- integer/letter generation, positional parameters and array expansion
new parameter expansion ${var|...} --- content filtering, list comprehension (like Python), regex/string splitting and joining, Python-like string methods, emulation of associative array lookup, etc.
extended case statement --- regex, continuation, then/else sections
extended for/while/until loops --- then/else sections, multiple for-loop variables
try-block with string exception (like Python)
new <<+ here-document --- relative indentation
new <<<< here-file
- extended read/echo builtins --- DOS lines, CSV format, and Awk emulation
sscanf(3), <string.h> and <ctype.h> wrappers, ASCII/string conversion, and binary number conversion.
new raise builtin for try-block
array cut/splicing, array filter/map/zip/unzip (like Python)
HTML template engine (like PHP, JSP, ASP)
GDBM, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and MySQL database interface
Expat XML parser interface
stack/queue operations on arrays and positional parameters
x-y character plot
Libwebserver (embedded web server) interface
GTK+2 interface for simple GUI dialog or layout
RPN calculator (like HP calculator)
creditcard checksum, masking, track data extraction
support for Protobase/Multi/Monetra API file, cent/dollar conversion