I have seen many cases where people try to create secure systems
and having very few files is a good idea.  The "if then" structure
gets unreasonable if you want to have the same rc.local (sunos...)
for 8 different subnets with 8 different default routes, and fortunately
most machines with only one ethernet interface.  It is NOT possible to
keep things right on a central depository if there are many files.
{we got rid of everything but rc.local}