@User after dealing somehow with these 'convoluted names' i came to the conclusion that instead of trying to get a meaningful string to be displayed in the schematic from the ngspice name i will likely use a '`descr`' attribute the user fills in with the info he want to be displayed, I think overall this is very much clearer and will resist to syntax changes in the naming conventions as simulators get updated. So if you are annotating for example a transconductance you put it next to the related transistor and use as a label 'gm=' or something similar. What do you think? This is BTW already done in the more complex '`ngspice_get_expr.sym`' so it makes the whole infrastructure more consistent.