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10.7.1 Definitions
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configuration file

     A file that affects the operation of a program, or provides site-
     or host-specific information, or otherwise customizes the behavior
     of a program.  Typically, configuration files are intended to be
     modified by the system administrator (if needed or desired) to
     conform to local policy or to provide more useful site-specific
     behavior.

‘conffile’

     A file listed in a package’s ‘conffiles’ file, and is treated
     specially by ‘dpkg’ (see Note: Details of configuration.).

The distinction between these two is important; they are not
interchangeable concepts.  Almost all ‘conffile’s are configuration
files, but many configuration files are not ‘conffiles’.

As noted elsewhere, ‘/etc/init.d’ scripts, ‘/etc/default’ files, scripts
installed in ‘/etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly}’, and cron
configuration installed in ‘/etc/cron.d’ must be treated as
configuration files.  In general, any script that embeds configuration
information is de-facto a configuration file and should be treated as
such.