What prints as what

Anything can be printed — and almost everything turns into text differently from what you expect

easyYou need: The text buffer, Emptiness: null

print takes any value, and the buffer takes only text. So a conversion happens somewhere in between, and its rules are worth knowing: half of all strange captions on displays come from here.

steptick 0

Print0

Print1

Print2

Print3

Print4

Print5

Print6

@counter0number

emptynullnull

textBuffer—string

Press “step” seven times. The buffer holds copper container null 0.5.

The conversion rules

What is printed	What lands in the buffer
a number less than 0.00001 away from a whole one	the whole number, no fraction: 120
any other number	as it is: 0.5, 3.25
a string	the string itself, without the quotes
an item, liquid, block or unit type	its English name: copper, titanium-conveyor
a building	its block’s name: container, not container1
a unit	its type’s name: poly
a team	the team’s name: sharded
emptiness	the word null

A building prints as its type

That is the first thing that surprises people. print container1 gives container, not container1.

The reason is simple: a link name belongs to the processor, not to the block. The building itself has no such name at all — it is your note in your program, and a neighbouring processor may call the same container something else. There is nothing to print but the block’s type. About link names, see the lesson “Links and getlink”.

Note

The names are always English: surge-alloy, titanium-conveyor, phase-fabric. Translating content names has nothing to do with logic — that lives in the game’s interface, while what is printed is the internal name. If you want a caption in another language, write it as a string yourself.

Emptiness prints as a word

print of null puts four letters into the buffer: null. Neither emptiness nor zero — the word itself.

Silent failure

That is why displays and message blocks so often hang there saying null: a sensor did not find the building, the program did not check for it, and the word rode into the caption. If you see null on a board, do not look for a printing mistake — look for an empty value further up the program.

Numbers print as in the variables table

The rule and the threshold are the same: 0.00001. If a number is less than that away from a whole one it prints whole; more, and it prints in full, every digit after the point included.

The threshold is not invented: it is written into the game itself, and the same hundred thousandth decides how a number is shown in the variables window.

One consequence spoils boards: op div share 1 3 prints as 0.3333333333333333. Rounding is up to you — op round, op floor or a multiply and a divide — and that is the lesson «Whole numbers and precision».

Remember

• A number prints whole if it is less than 0.00001 away from a whole one; otherwise in full.
• An item, a block and a unit print as their English name.
• A building prints as its block’s name: the link name belongs to the processor, not to it.
• Emptiness prints as the word null — the most common caption-as-a-bug there is.

Task

Replace container1 in the third line with @container and run the example again: the buffer holds the same word container. A building and its type print identically — by the block’s name — even though they are completely different values.

Then add the line op div third 1 3 before the printing and print third: 0.3333333333333333 appears in the buffer. That is exactly how an untrimmed fraction looks on a board.