Mame - Softlist and Playlist

Hi everyone, I just wanted to know what softlist is? I am pretty new in mame and i set up retroarch with mame. The results are great. Yesterday i splitted my playlist into system based playlists (neogeo, cps, etc.) and i was surprised that none of the neogeo games were working anymore. The paths and all configurations were correct. Even the bios was in the same folder. I found a hint here in the community about neogeo cd to deactivate softlist in the core options. I did that and every neogeo game was working afterwards.

So now, I would like to know what the feature „softlist“ is, with the possible relation concerning playlists.

Thanks for the support.

Softlists are used for playing console games, like SNES, Genesis, etc., in MAME. Basically anything that used to be run through MESS.