Automatically delete extra spaces inside hierarchival keywords

[sinus]

If XMP hieararchical keaywords contains extra spaces at the start or end of | it is impossible to write back such files.
They have the pencil for "write back" always.

If I delete them "by hand" in the metadata-field, all is fine after a write back.

Would it be possible, that IMatch deletes such spaces automatically during the write back?

See also here:
https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=10317.0 (your own last post)

[Mario]

How do you create such keywords? In IMatch? Which workflow do you use?
Or where these keywords created by another software?

The write-back works just fine, the problem is that somewhere along the re-import and mapping, the blanks are removed and the mapping via the thesaurus does not match, thus maybe producing additional flat keywords, or at least a write-back pending flag. This depends on whether or not there are flattened keywords consisting only of one of the levels of the hierarchical keyword and maybe other combinations of thesaurus and flattening settings.

Have you tried the Metadata Mechanic to repair this problem in your files? Or a Metadata Template?

There is no open bug report and this problem seems to be rather isolated (one or two users affected?). Not sure if I should spend time figuring out what the problem is and then come up with a solution that maybe helps a handful of users. I mean, if this would be a common problem, it would come up often here in the community or in support emails.

I guess I can ar least if I can trim these blanks before adding them to the database. This would solve both the import problem and user error problems during input in the KW panel.

[Mario]

Just made a quick check with the Metadata Wizard (the #1 tool for fixing all your metadata problems).
With these settings I could trim the extra blanks before and after | by replacing <blank>|<blank> with just a single |.