Embedding other scripting languages in Bash
Mix It Up
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Solve Bash blind spots by embedding other scripting languages into your Bash scripts to get the features you need. Pete shows you solutions for floating-point math, charting, GUIs, and hardware integration.
While Bash has a huge variety of command-line tools that you can integrate into your code, sometimes you can still get stuck. Bash is extremely powerful, but, like all programming languages, it has its weakness. Some typical areas that can be challenging when using Bash include:
- Floating-point math
- Charting
- Graphical user interfaces (GUIs)
- Hardware integration
Command-line utilities can help address many of these topics, such as bc for floating-point math or Zenity [1] for user dialogs. While these tools are extremely useful, they may not give you the functionality or customization that you need. A common approach to solving this issue is to write standalone programs in another language, like Python, and then have your Bash script call that program.
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