Is this actually something I want to see in a configuration script? Why not just use a scripting langauge and be done with it? I wonder if the safety features can't be replicated with rigorous testing of say python as config scripts instead of learning yet another programming language?
https://prelude.dhall-lang.org/Text/concatSep.dhall
I think this is the key fulcrum for me: "config is code", sure, but not the same kind of "code".
It -is- compelling to argue for statistically deterministic config code but my practical objection here is 'can we arrive at same safety using testing with a known language?'
Writing this has made consider whether configuration should be conceptually looked at as a database instead of "code". How many people even know how e.g. postgres stores its tables and why would modulo some performance niche would you care anyway?
It seems configuration management is a graph db query and update matter. Standardize on configuration query language (if necessary) and stop worrying how the damn thing is represented by the config management tool.