Blank metadata problem

Lightroom Classic 10.4 on Mac OS 10.15.7

I am doing some massive metadata clean-up and have run into a bug. It is showing up in the Library metadata Location entry fields, but possibly is happening elsewhere as well.  If I fill in a Location field with an entry, then go back to erase it and leave it blank (by back-spacing to delete), it does not accept my erasure. The field properly shows a blank, but when I do a Library metadata search, the image still shows up under the prior term.  The only way around it is to type in a space. Then it is reported as a blank space, rather than an Unknown Location.