Multi rules understanding

[ia1234]

I want to create my own rule sets, but i can't understand what exactly "Each rule of each rule-file is combined with each rule of each rule-file" means. For example if I have 3 rule sets with power 4, 3, 2 respectively, then the amount of rules will be 4*3 + 4*2 +3*2 = 26. Is it true? Do the separate(single) rule files participate in calcuation - or we use just unions of several rules? The problem in my alghoritm is according to the source code the kernel_rules_cnt equals to 4*3*2=24 (not 26!) I didn't discover carefully what exactly the code did, because it was too complicated.
Can anybody help me? Thank you

[Xanadrel]

I suggest you play with hashcat and --stdout switch with small rule files to see what it exactly does and learn by yourself.

[epixoip]

It's strange to me that you are looking for answers in the code first, instead of simply observing the behavior of the program.