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99 bottles

Submitted by Bryce on Mon, 12/05/2011 - 18:33

It’s been a while since I put up one of these simple code posts. Let me fix that. :P

Quiet a while ago, this code needed to have the dust blown off of it. Programming Praxis had its readers program out the song for “Nintey-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall".

Here is my version of it:

  1. #!/usr/bin/env python
  2.  
  3. from __future__ import print_function
  4.  
  5. def output(in_int):
  6.     if in_int != 1:
  7.         return "%d bottles of beer on the wall, %d bottles of beer." \
  8.                 "You take one down, pass it around, %d bottles of beer" \
  9.                 "on the wall." % (in_int,in_int, in_int - 1)
  10.     else:
  11.         return "%d bottle of beer on the wall, %d bottle of beer." \
  12.                 "You take one down, pass it around, %d bottles of beer" \
  13.                 "on the wall." % (in_int,in_int, in_int - 1)
  14.  
  15. if __name__ == "__main__":
  16.     [ print(output(x)) for x in reversed(xrange(1,99)) ]

That’s all there is to it really. The only enlightening thing about this I can say is that this algorithm reminds me a lot of my Code to lyrics post I wrote a little over a year ago. It’s amazing how simple songs are when they’re broken down to their basic elements. Anyone feel like setting up an “automatic song generation” business with me?
#1Submitted by Leszek T (not verified) on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 08:12.

instead of reversed

I would:

[ print(output(x)) for x in xrange(99,1,-1)) ]
#2Submitted by Bryce on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 10:22.

DOH, you're right Leszek. I

DOH, you're right Leszek. I totally forgot I could do that. MEMORY FAIL!
#3Submitted by Leszek T (not verified) on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 14:04.

Of course not a problem in case of 99 bottles :)

But in a case of fast, heavy drinkers... :)
#4Submitted by Sean Upton (not verified) on Mon, 12/05/2011 - 22:12.

How about this?


def output(in_int):
plural = in_int-1 and 's' or ''
return "%d bottle%s of beer on the wall, %d bottle%s of beer." \
"You take one down, pass it around, %d bottles of beer" \
"on the wall." % (in_int, plural, in_int, plural, in_int - 1)
#5Submitted by Bryce on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 10:24.

Hey Sean, agf's comments

Hey Sean, agf's comments aside, that is a neat little hack that would definitely cut down on the size of the output function. Thanks for sharing it.
#6Submitted by agf (not verified) on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 01:09.

Python has a conditional expression now

Don't use the and / or hack. There is a real conditional expression in Python, introduced in version 2.5, which works even if the "True" result (in your example, 's') evaluates to "False".

's' if in_int - 1 else ''
#7Submitted by Bryce on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 10:26.

I didn't know that Python had

I didn't know that Python had conditional expressions. I will have to write some code just to check it out. Thanks!
#8Submitted by mma news (not verified) on Mon, 12/19/2011 - 03:52.

i even don't know about that

i even don't know about that functionality as i am new to python thanks for that . it really help me a lot.

MMA News
#9Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 07:01.

Why? and/or works just fine

Why? and/or works just fine in this case, and the if/else syntax is ugly and inside-out.

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