ReadFile with Printf won't escape content directory

If I use readFile with print or printf I can’t get it to look outside of the content folder. Is this how it’s supposed to work?

If I try something like…
{{ readFile (printf "static/%s" .svg) | safeHTML }}

I get the error
/content/static/img/top-traingle.svg: no such file or directory

But if I hardcode it in like {{ readFile "static/img/top-triangle.svg" | safeHTML}} it works.

I even tried declaring the staticDir and contentDir in my hugo config file (even though they are the default ones). I also tried to range the whole /img directory but once I used readFile it would only look in the /content directory again.

I did find this issue but it doesn’t appear to be 100% related to my issue.

Any thoughts here or is this just a limitation?