> which is impossible on [..] Apple.

Out of curiosity, why is that? macOS does provide a Unix environment and Bash & Zsh shells. (and Homebrew or MacPorts are package managers that can provide updated versions of whatever)

I suppose it's possible in the sense that anything is possible. But, in my experience, Mac versions of Linux tools are not A) Posix compliant, B) outdated, C) don't have the exact same functionality, and/or D) Abandoned.

I use Linux because the scripts are easily moved between the cluster computers and my computers, but I suppose YMMV

> But, in my experience, Mac versions of Linux tools are not A) Posix compliant, B) outdated, C) don't have the exact same functionality, and/or D) Abandoned.

You’d definitely want to use Hombrew: you can get the GNU utilities instead of the BSD ones Apple tends to ship, at the latest versions, and it’s a single command to update everything.

Windows, what about PowerShell? I've not used it extensively, but have heard good things.

Or just use Python across all three platforms?

Honestly it's not really feasible to use Python when basic Linux tools like comm, or dos2linux, which take literally just a few characters, recreating the functionality in Python would be a headache.

Yeah, I don' really know hey, I'm just a metal fabricator by trade.

My point was more generally about: surely tools exist on the different operating system to achieve similar outcomes?