my cousin wrote a vt52 emulator in bash, and i was looking at a macro assembler written in bash the other day: https://github.com/jhswartz/mle-amd64/blob/master/amd64. i haven't seen a cscope written in bash, but you probably remember how the first versions of ctags were written in sh (or csh?) and ed. so there's not much limit to how far shell functions can go in augmenting your programming environment
if awk, python, or perl is accepted, the possibilities expand further
Sure, but this is taking things to a bit of an absurd extreme. If I worked in a restrictive environment where I couldn't install my own tools, I don't think I would be in a position to burn a ton of my employer's time building sophisticated development tools in bash.
(One-off small scripts for things, sure. But I'm not going to implement something like ctags or cscope or a LSP server in bash.)
certainly it's absurd! nobody would deny that. on the other hand, the problem to solve is also an absurd problem
and i wasn't suggesting trying to bill for doing it, but rather, if you were frequently in this situation, it might be reasonable to spend non-billable time between clients doing it
I guess I don’t see the problem as absurd. As a freelancer I need to focus on the problems the customer will pay for. I don’t write code for free or in my spare time anymore, I used to years ago. i feel comfortable working with the constraints imposed, I think of that as a valuable skill, not a handicap.
if awk, python, or perl is accepted, the possibilities expand further