# Chat Template Delimiter Handling Update ## Overview This change modifies how delimiters are handled when applying chat templates in the request construction process for likelihood and multiple-choice based tasks. When `apply_chat_template` is set to `True`, the target delimiter is now set to an empty string instead of using the configured delimiter. ## Background By default, the system uses a target delimiter (typically a whitespace " ") between the context and target text when constructing prompts. The full string is constructed as: ``` doc_to_text(doc) + target_delimiter + doc_to_target(doc) ``` While this worked well for base models where we wanted the model to predict a single whitespace followed by the answer, chat models have their own formatting conventions that handle spacing differently. ## The Change - When `apply_chat_template=True`, the target delimiter is now empty ("") instead of the default whitespace - This prevents interference between chat template formatting and the default delimiter system - Particularly important for multiple choice tasks where the template itself handles spacing ## Example ``` # Before (with default delimiter " ") Question: What color is the sky?\nAnswer: blue # After Question: What color is the sky?\nAnswer:blue ```