# Suggestion for improvement: Contextual history of format strings

**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/suggestion-for-improvement-contextual-history-of-format-strings/59646
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [January 8, 2023, 4:29pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/suggestion-for-improvement-contextual-history-of-format-strings/59646 "2023-01-08T16:29:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/user_avatar/community.mp3tag.de/ohrenkino/32/4843_2.png) [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2023, 9:02pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/suggestion-for-improvement-contextual-history-of-format-strings/59646/2 "2023-01-08T21:02:48Z")

</div>

I see your point ...  
and I really had to think some time whether your idea was so obvious that it is a pity that the function does not already work like it.

And then I remembered this thread:

> [@2 Actions: Append term to Genre unless term already exists and distribute terms to fields if not duplicated](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/2-actions-append-term-to-genre-unless-term-already-exists-and-distribute-terms-to-fields-if-not-duplicated/59614/1):
>
> Hello and Happy New Year!! I have a system where I have custom fields for multiple genres to attach to a song. So I have the regular %genre% along with %genre1%, %genre2%, %genre3% and so on. When I am done tagging I just append all these terms to the %genre% field using "/" as the delimiter. In order to do this, I have created this tag to tag action with the field %genre% formatted by the following string: %genre%$if(%genre1%, / %genre1%,)$if(%genre2%, / %genre2%,)$if(%genre3%, / %genre3%,)$…

The suggested format string to remove duplicates from genre was originally used for a different field.  
And then I rememberd that the suggested filter expression to find the number of genres was originally used to determine the folder depth ...  
So it is not always that the format strings are used only in 1 context.  
Which means that we end up with the unavoidable request for an "option". Or perhaps a different sorting (first those for the current field, then all the others).

---

_[View the full topic](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/suggestion-for-improvement-contextual-history-of-format-strings/59646)._