[Ciantic]

> designed to replace legacy shell scripting ... as arguments are passed as a structured array, not a raw string to be parsed by a shell

I find shell scripters prefer ubiquity and readability over raw performance. And making it mandatory to give arguments as arrays worsens the readabilty. However having both options would be good, your example doesn't actually require the shell escaping so it could have simpler way.

Here is equivalent in Deno for instance

    #!/usr/bin/env -S deno run --allow-all
    import $ from "jsr:@david/dax"; 
    const command = $`grep -r keyword .`.pipe($`wc -l`);
    const result = await command;

Deno (via library) and Bun both have $ that can also handle escaping, e.g.

    const dirName = "Dir with spaces";
    await $`mkdir ${dirName}`; // executes as: mkdir 'Dir with spaces'

I don't think syntax is your biggest hurdle though, biggest hurdle is that Bash is so common, Powershell was supposed to be better shell scripting, yet it takes nowhere outside Windows space.

[pastage]

> X was supposed to be better shell scripting

These are often ecosystem which always becomes "all or nothing", you see this in all big languages Javascript, Java and even fish. All of them handle integration in their own way. Shell scripting is the only thing that recognises that reality is ugly.