This isn’t specific to Bash - there’s little in the way of set coding standards (it looks like it’s limited to a short list of style guidelines and whatever linting there is in the build) for any language on this project, and I haven’t seen this discussed. I don’t see the clean code issue changing without that. As a starter, you could try adding shellcheck to the style guidelines, sharing its findings across a small sample of scripts on the forum, or post an argument for introducing tighter standards. Standards can also create obstacles to contribution, so expect a bit of push+pull - it would be interesting to see where the overall opinion is in this community and on the team.
Despite not working under Windows and being discouraged in favor of Python, Bash isn’t exactly deprecated here - it’s here to stay and we definitely shouldn’t ignore quality issues.
Well. The current trend is to avoid bash as much as possible and rewrite everything in Python whenever possible. I quote this directly from official Coding Style Guidelines:
Avoid writing scripts in bash whenever possible. Use python instead. Bash-scripts are Unix-specific and will not work under Windows VMs, or in Windows admin domain, or Windows gui domain.
And I have seen multiple tools which used to be bash scripts are written from scratch in Python.
But we are not discussing writing scripts from scratch (which the recommendation addresses). Or, if that guideline means “rewrite every bash script you see into Python”, then all issues requiring fixing existing bash scripts need a completely different approach.
You are right. Refactoring it is most probably an excellent idea.
I have an unrelated question BTW. I believe you use the forum via e-mail. I wonder what happens when I edit a reply to you. Do you receive an updated version? Is it confusing or your mail client could handle this properly?