Please read my original comment in the pull requst. This code *is* from https://github.com/andrew/node-sass/blob/9b752b2729f039590f15ffe239a61e60d0984c77/lib/cli.js#L119-L132

These checks are being done in the cli.js as the sass.render function doesn't do such configuration. I'm not sure if @andrew is planning to move this logic into node-sass.