Format (String) has four inputs for a reason?

[yar]

I use string formatting a lot. But I keep getting the same question - does it make any sense that the Format node has exactly four inputs? Maybe it’s a legacy thing? Can we simplify life a bit and try to make a modern node for formatting strings with one input by default, incrementing them with the already familiar CTRL+ combination?

[yar]

For example, there’s a non-obvious problem here
From what I can understand, a lot of garbage is created on these pins in such a case