Hi
I’m reading the book Learn to Program, by Chris P… I
wanted to see if my program 99 bottles of beer on the wall, from (pg.57
or http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/?Chapter=06 ) is
o.k.?
An online search thru Google found Ruby-Talk, and I
instantly bookmarked it.
Now I’m on the list.
Any thoughts would be appreciated 
Hears my try at it
Thanks
puts
puts ‘99, Bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer,’
puts ‘take one down, pass it around,’
first = 99
while first != 1
if first != 1
first = first -1
end
puts first.to_s + ’ Bottles of beer on the wall, ’ + first.to_s + ’
bottles of beer,’
puts ‘take one down pass it around,’
end
puts ‘0,Bottles of beer on the wall ;)’
Hi Jamison, I came up with a shorter version. I think it is more
efficient, but I am about as new as you are. Here was my code:
bottles = 99
while bottles > 0
puts bottles.to_s + " bottles of beer on the wall, " + bottles.to_s +
" bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around, " + (bottles
= bottles - 1).to_s + " bottles of beer."
end
Hi Jamison,
The first thing I would do is remove the duplication with:
puts ‘99, Bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer,’
puts ‘take one down, pass it around,’
and put that in the loop. Since your code in the loop does the same
thing, you could just decrement the value of first after printing the
current lyrics, and let that only reside in 1 place instead of two.
This way, if the song changes to something like “take one down, take a
big swig and pass it around,” you only need to change it in one place.
Also, it doesn’t appear the “if first != 1” block will never be
executed (and I don’t see a need for it even if it was), so you could
remove it and just decrement the value of first.
Finally, I think the variable name of first could be better named as to
what it represents. After the first bottle of beer is removed from the
wall, it no longer represents the first bottle. So, I might go with
something like current_bottle, or just anything that describes it better
really.
-Sam
On 11/7/06, jamison edmonds [email protected] wrote:
Any thoughts would be appreciated
Instead of using a ‘while’ loop (unless that’s what the book is
teaching you) I think the following is more Ruby-esque:
99.downto( 1 ) do |num|
puts “#{num} bottles of beer on the wall, #{num} bottles of beer,”
puts “take one down, pass it around,”
end
puts ‘0,Bottles of beer on the wall ;)’
Note the use of string interpolation also instead of .to_s and +
you could drop the unless and the final line. ( num = 1, num-1 = 0 
99.downto( 1 ) do |num|
puts
puts “#{num} bottles of beer on the wall, #{num} bottles of beer,”
puts “take one down, pass it around,”
puts “#{num-1} bottles of beer on the wall”
end
Altho I think the book hasn’t covered the enumeration type stuff yet
like downto.
Phrogz wrote:
99.downto( 1 ) do |num|
puts “#{num} bottles of beer on the wall, #{num} bottles of beer,”
puts “take one down, pass it around,”
end
puts ‘0,Bottles of beer on the wall ;)’
Oops, I am, of course, missing one line of the song, and a nice newline
for breaks. Should be more like:
99.downto( 1 ) do |num|
puts
puts “#{num} bottles of beer on the wall, #{num} bottles of beer,”
puts “take one down, pass it around,”
puts “#{num-1} bottles of beer on the wall” unless num == 1
end
puts ‘0 bottles of beer on the wall ;)’