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Yuck, I was always instinctively put off by [[, now I finally have some arguments to justify it.

IMO safe shell scripting is kind of dead. I can do it if I really have to, but too many external programs have tricky "convenience" features like interpreting flags after positional parameters, etc.

Honestly I just don't write shell scripts anymore, bash or otherwise. By the time any system I use is up, Python is available. I don't know if I've found a true need for shell in anything application level. I'll even fire up a Python shell for something simple like mass renaming files, simply because the string manipulation is so much easier.

My first insinct would be to remove the bashisms first:

https://gist.github.com/alganet/a4198158651f3b2dc43ce658052e...

Then, if we run it:

"line 3: test: a[$(cat /etc/passwd > /tmp/pwned)] + 42: integer expression expected"

I... don't understand. I thought the whole reason for using [[ and breaking posix compatibility was to prevent just this kind of vulnerability. Why would bash do this.