darknes and light magic interactions?

[Voadam]

The text of light and darkness descriptor spells usually says they counter or dispel equal or lower level spells of the conflicting descriptor.

I'm not entirely sure what this means.

For instance in daylight it says

Daylight counters or dispels any darkness spell of equal or lower level, such as darkness.

Countering is explained in the magic overview section under countering, but I could only find dispel magic for dispelling.

Is it that spells that contact each other automatically dispel equal or lower level ones?

Must you target the opposing spell to dispel it? The object that bears the spell?

What happens when your continual flame's illumination comes into contact with the darkness from a tiefling?

 

[TheGogmagog]

To dispell an equal or lower spell you would target the first spell. Note that light and darkness have a range of touch, making this more difficult when the target object is attended. First you would need to make a touch attack against the object size plus dex of creature holding it. Then once that is made, or if the spell has a range the attended object would get the creatures save to resist. Assuming all this succeeds or the object was unattended, or the spell affected an area instead of a target, the spell is 'automatically' dispelled.

As far as darkness and continual flame, the overlapping areas would revert to the prevailing lighting conditions. In this case they would be suppressed and not countered while they remained in the same area.