The logic sorter

The sorter in logic mode needs a decision from the chip for every item. The logic sorter (StructureLogicSorter) decides by itself – by rules in its own memory. The chip writes the rules in once, and after that the machine sorts on its own.

How it decides#

The logic sorter has a memory with 32 slots. Every slot is a rule. If the item in the input matches the rules, it goes to output 2, otherwise to output 1. How the rules work together is set by Mode:

A slot with 0 is empty and gets skipped.

SorterInstruction values#

Every rule is a number put together from parts. The lowest byte is the instruction from the namespace SorterInstruction.:

The comparison is 0 for equal (Equals), 1 for greater (Greater), 2 for less (Less), 3 for not equal (NotEquals). “Greater” means: the item's value is greater than the value in the rule. “Quantity greater 10” therefore hits stacks from 11 pieces.

Times 256 shifts a number one byte to the left, times 65,536 two. You learn bit instructions later in the year – for these rules multiplying and adding is enough. Negative prefab hashes work this way too, because the sorter only reads out the right bytes.

mul b1 ORES TWO_BYTES
mul tmp EQUALS BYTE
add b1 b1 tmp
add b1 b1 CLASS_CMP

ORES is 9, CLASS_CMP is 3. So the rule “class equals ores” is the number 589,827.

Writing into the memory#

Another device's memory is written with put device address value. The device here is the ReferenceId:

put id 0 b1
put id 1 b2

With Mode 0 (All) and the two rules “class ores” and “not dirty ore” all real ores go to output 2.