Clunky is subjective -- I think we can probably agree that there are clunkier, more opaque, and harder to work with constructs in programming than a slightly different syntax for array declaration.

What are these build systems where you need to install Bash? Bash 4 was released in 2009: it's been in every major Linux distribution for at least two major versions, ditto for FreeBSD... heck, even Solaris ships with it now.

You're right, there are clunkier, more opaque, and harder to work with constructs in programming. Like `sh` arguments. And like `sh` quotebarf.

And Busybox is commonplace. Systems that include Busybox usually do not include `bash`. And so, for my purposes, if I can specify `bash`, I can also specify, say, Ruby, which--while by no means perfect--makes life much, much easier.