I have no idea how to begin to read that... How is this better than something like this: gen-hosts config-file > /etc/hosts ? See this gist I just made:

I have no idea how to begin to read that... How is this better than something like this: gen-hosts config-file > /etc/hosts ? See this gist I just made: https://gist.github.com/1274379 https://gist.github.com/1274379 That script is (1) more understandable to a programmer, (2) unambiguous with respect to output, (3) idempotent, (4) super extensible. I suspect your Puppet script is doing some other stuff, but I can't begin to mentally parse it... EDIT: Just wanted to point out that I didn't try to make that script either correct or identical to your script. Just wanted to give an impression of the flow of things.