YAML multiline strings incorrectly parsed

GitLab CI/CD
1

Problem to solve

Trying to use multiline strings in a CI/CD component, e.g. alike this template:

# templates/foo_job/template.yml
spec:
  inputs:
    bar:
      default: "bar"
---

.foo-job:
  script:
    - &query_r_deps >-
      Rscript .gitlab/query_r_deps.R
        "$[[ inputs.bar ]]"

The main .gitlab-ci.yml is in another project, and looks like:

# .gitlab-ci.yml
include:
  - component: $CI_SERVER_FQDN/domain/project/foo_job

actual_foo_job:
  script:
    - !reference [ .foo_job, script ]

This fails to run as the argument is not passed to Rscript as it should be.

If I look at Full configuration in the Pipeline Editor with the substituted values for each of the inputs, I see:

...
  script:
  - |-
    Rscript .gitlab/query_r_deps.R
      "bar"
..

The argument "bar" is now its own command because the type of block quote has been changed.

Versions

I would like to avoid bash-specific fixes, and also to understand why the Full configuration seems to convert all > blocks to | blocks, even though this can cause fundamental changes in what is executed.

I was not able to solve my problem with https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/script.html#split-long-commands. If there are other resources or explanations, thanks in advance.