Hmmm ... "script" is an ambiguous word. I think you were using it to suggest a simplistic and restricted solution, which is what that shell script provides.
Small perl programs are often called scripts, because they're short, but there's just as much flexibility in there as in C ...
However, shell scripts can do huge amounts of processing and to be honest, I more often write a bash script than I do a perl program, because I know the set of standard unix commands rather well. It's just a matter of choosing whatever language you're happiest with, I guess.
I once wrote an app that controls rsync runs which consisted of maybe 300 lines of bash.....
