Help with template

[glazedbelmont]

Hello,

I'm genuinely trying to wrap my head around calibre's template functions but basically what I want to do is include the title in the filename IF it differs from the series (mangas usually don't have title, they only go by "series #number" and in calibre, they're named the same as the series so I can't use a simple check to see if it exists.).

For example:

A book should display like this due to having an actual title


A manga should display like this


I may be critically misunderstanding how it all works but this is what I have going which well, doesn't work, from what I could gather, I shouldn't be using {var} but instead $var but this only leads to errors

What I had going was:
{series}/{series}{series_index:0>2s| - Vol. |} {series:contains({title},,- {title})}

but this ends up failing on some stuff, I tried swapping out for $title instead but this leads to errors too.

The error given is:


To be specific, this is a template to save to a device from the "Configure [device] screen"

Any help?

[glazedbelmont]

Ok so I delved into it a bit deeper, I see what I need to do, my task was basically way too complex for this function.

[glazedbelmont]

OK so I went and fixed my issue, python mode just worked perfectly. I've attached the template for people to use if they ever want to do what I wanted to do and can't figure it out