APL - 99 Bottles of Beer

Author

99 Bottles of Beer

Frank J. Lhota

2004-10-22, 3:55 pm

The following site does an amusing comparison of programming languages:

http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/

The idea is to compare programming languages by applying them to one common
problem: printing the lyrics to the song "99 Bottles of Beer"! This site
includes presents 621 versions of the program. The variety of languages is
stunning, including:

- old time languages (Algol 60, Bliss, PL/1),
- newer languages (Java, C++, Python),
- scripting langages ( Bourne Shell, Korn Shell, VMS DCL and even DOS
Batch!), and
- "Joke" languages (Beatnik, BrainF*ck, Cow, INTERCAL).

Noticable in its absense is an APL version of "99 Bottles", although there
is a nice J implementation. I figure that someone in this newsgroup could
rectify the situation. I urge you to take a look at the site, take a crack
at writing the APL version of "99 Bottles of Beer" and submit it. APL should
not be left out of this site!

David Liebtag

2004-10-22, 8:55 pm

I thought I sent them an APL2 example years ago. I just sent it again.

SONG{<-}BEER COUNT;#IO
#IO{<-}1
TEXT{<-}4{rho}' bottles of beer on the wall,' ' bottles of beer,' 'Take one
down and pass it around.'
SONG{<- }{disclose}{disclose}({format}{each}{eac
h}({enclose}0 0 0
{neg}1)+{each}({enclose}1 1 0
1){rho}{each}{each}{reverse}{iota}COUNT)
,{each}{each}{enclose}TEXT

David Liebtag
IBM APL Products and Services

TaliesinSoft

2004-10-22, 8:55 pm

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:56:41 -0500, Frank J. Lhota wrote
(in article <JJced.172$Xq3.147@trndny01> ):

> Noticable in its absense is an APL version of "99 Bottles"

I just now, for fun and such, wrote, in Dyalog APL, a solution, but when I
got finished I wondered if the number of bottles should be spelled-out, as
in my version, or if they should just be digits.

Here's a description of my solution....

I created three vectors, Ones, Teens, and Tens, and then appropriately joined
them together so I had character sequences expressing the values, e.g.
Ninety-Nine

Ninety-Eight

.....

Twenty

Nineteen

Eighteen

.....

Ten

Nine

.....

Zero

Having this vector it was then trivial to create a loop so that numeric
values could be appropriately inserted.

The solution is in Dyalog APL and uses an recursive dynamic function to
compose the verses.

-- James L. Ryan -- TaliesinSoft

TaliesinSoft

2004-10-22, 8:55 pm

A couple of conditions when the numbers are stated as words and not digits.

The opening and closing verses should read (using the lyrics we sang when I
was in high school)....

==========

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall
Ninety-nine bottles of beer
If one of those bottles should happen to fall
Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall

Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall
Ninety-eight bottles of beer
If one of those bottles should happen to fall
Ninety-seven bottles of beer on the wall

........

Two bottles of beer on the wall
Two bottles of beer
If one of those bottles should happen to fall
One bottle of beer on the wall

One bottle of beer on the wall
One bottle of beer
If that bottle should happen to fall
No bottles of beer on the wall

==========

Note that the unit values (nine, eight, etc.) are capitalized when they are
the opening of a line but not when they are otherwise. And note that the
wording of the last two verses is a bit different than the remaining verses,
plurals being changed to singulars.

I have no idea how much the solutions for other languages took any of these
nuances into consideration.

-- James L. Ryan -- TaliesinSoft

David Liebtag

2004-10-27, 3:55 am

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