Hello all,
As I am going through my ruby book (Trying to learn Ruby of course) on
how to use flow control, one of the exercises is to create a program
that sings “99 bottles of beer on the wall”
I have started to create this program and I am at the point where I want
to test what I have done so far (code is not finished). When I try to
run my code, I get the following error:
99bottles.rb:10: syntax error, unexpected tIDENTIFIER, expecting kEND
puts number + ’ bottles of beer on the wall, ’ number + ’ bottles of
beer. Take
^
one down pass it around’
The snipet of code its referring to is:
puts number + ’ bottles of beer on the wall, ’ number + ’ bottles of
beer. Take one down pass it around’
My first thought is that my spacing between the variable “number” and
the “+” sign are screwing things up but I can’t seem how since to me
that clearly looks OK.
It could also be that I just don’t understand how to properly right a
variable into a string, but to me that also looks right ( I even tried
it with the .to_s and still nothing).
Can anyone help me understand what I am doing wrong?
On Oct 17, 2006, at 7:59 PM, Lovell Mcilwain wrote:
The snipet of code its referring to is:
puts number + ’ bottles of beer on the wall, ’ number + ’ bottles of
beer. Take one down pass it around’
You are missing a plus in the above line. You need one right before
the second number to join it into the string.
When you get that far, you will run into a new error (assuming
number is actually numeric). 
You need to convert numbers to put them in strings. You can do this
with the to_s method available to all numbers:
puts ‘1 + 2 =’ + 3.to_s
Hope that helps.
Welcome to Ruby.
James Edward G. II
Hi.
I’m no ruby expert yet, but I believe the problem is this:
/on the wall, ’ number + ’ bottles
/which should read
/on the wall, ’ + number + 'bottles/
You left out the + after the string and before the “number” variable.
Have fun.
Hi Lovell,
For your example,
puts number + ’ bottles of beer on the wall, ’ number + ’ bottles of
beer. Take one down pass it around’
try this instead:
puts number + ’ bottles of beer on the wall, ’ + number + ’ bottles of
beer. Take one down pass it around’
Note the ‘+ number +’ at the second variable call.
best, George
Thanks guys,
I did miss that + sign before the second variable. I can’t believe I
missed it. I had been looking at that same piece of code for about 4
hours trying to figure it out and it was so simple 
Now that I am still in my testing, I have run into another issue with my
while statement. I am new to programming all together so I am having a
bit of an issue understanding loops in general.
When I tried to run my program this other error has shown up:
99bottles.rb:22: syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting kEND
Its saying an unexpected end but I can’t see where. My “ends” seem to
be fine but I will post the entire while loop, maybe its another simple
thing Im missing again.
number = 99
while input > number
puts number + ’ bottles of beer on the wall, ’ + number + ’ bottles of
beer. Take one down pass it around’
input=gets.chomp
while input > number
if input < number
puts 'No Way! Choose a lower number then ' + number.to_s
else
number = (number.to_i - 1)
end
end
On Oct 17, 2006, at 8:37 PM, Lovell Mcilwain wrote:
while input > number
puts number + ’ bottles of beer on the wall, ’ + number + ’
bottles of
beer. Take one down pass it around’
input=gets.chomp
while input > number
You have to while statements there, but only “end” one of them.
Every while needs a matching “end” where it stops.
James Edward G. II
Well looks like I didn’t indent properly and I missed an end. Im going
to try and run it and see what I get (fingers crossed)
Yep I corrected my indenting and noticed it. I did add another end to
the bottom of the program. But Im still not able to run this program.
My lack of a definition of my variable input which isn’t defined till
later in a while loop.
Can anyone tell me the best way in this case to define a starting point
and explain why or how it would work? (Have to learn something with all
this)
On 2006.10.18 10:06, James Edward G. II wrote:
When you get that far, you will run into a new error (assuming
number is actually numeric).
You need to convert numbers to put them in strings. You can do this
with the to_s method available to all numbers:
puts ‘1 + 2 =’ + 3.to_s
Or
puts “1 + 2 = #{3}”
To avoid having to #to_s everything manually.
On 2006.10.18 11:46, Lovell Mcilwain wrote:
Converting my variables to string got my program to the point where its
asking for my input. Once I put it in, it bails on me with a comparison
error.
99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer. Take one down pass
it around
98
99bottles.rb:15:in `>’: comparison of String with 99 failed
(ArgumentError)
from 99bottles.rb:15
This problem is because you cannot say 99 > “6”.
input = gets
puts ‘true’ if input.to_i < 99
For example. You must use explicit conversion in most cases in Ruby.
Converting my variables to string got my program to the point where its
asking for my input. Once I put it in, it bails on me with a comparison
error.
99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer. Take one down pass
it around
98
99bottles.rb:15:in `>’: comparison of String with 99 failed
(ArgumentError)
from 99bottles.rb:15
I still believe this has something to do with my starting point problem
and not knowing how to specify it correctly.