The good thing is that it's well documented. As opposed to something like ruby, which doesn't have any complete language reference documentation, for bash everything is in the manpage, and it's not that long either.

There's also the info-manual, but I'm doubting it offers any more detail than the manpage. They're both probably equally complete.

I never thought to look at the man page for bash to learn bash. Turns out it's 78 pages and looks excellent based on a quick scan. Thanks for the recommendation!

(7 days later) Also, check out Bash's `help` command. Shockingly good terse info.

wait til you look at the man pages for man... it's awesome!