I don't know, /etc/shells doesn't list /usr/bin/perl on my system. ;-) If you usually work on Linux boxen (BSD as well I guess?), you will probably pick up enough bash syntax for scripts like this one in your daily interactive bashing. Besides the oddities in variable interpolation it's pretty simple, so man bash is completely sufficient to figure out the language (as opposed to something like Perl).
The main reason to use bash is that for the things it's good for, it requires less - sometimes a lot less - red tape than even the already concise Perl. The difference is that while simple things are ridiculously trivial in bash, difficult things are very hard if at all possible and always require a lot of hoop jumping.
I find bash knowledge to be a very valuable tool in my set, it can save a lot of time if you know when to and when not to use it.
(Of course, that's because I'm on a Linux machine. If you primarily work on Windows, bash knowledge is just about useless to you.)
Makeshifts last the longest.
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