Re: >= and <= for string comparison

[Seth David Schoen]

I would say that bash is somewhat constrained by implementing a language
that's descended from (and backwards compatible with) the Bourne Shell,
and by having had that language evolve over time.  That means there's less
regularity and unity of design in bash than there might be if it were a
language designed from scratch at a single point in time, including
because of the pervasive need to deal with parsing ambiguities where an
operator can mean multiple things.

So I don't think one could expect by default that all irregularities,
idiosyncrasies, or apparent inconsistencies in bash's syntax or
functionality would be eliminated -- except maybe by making a new shell
dialect that explicitly broke backwards compatibility.