n=0;~/s/ until/, 99\D+/=~$_="Take one down and pass it around, #{c=n+=
+1," bottle#$& of beer"," on the wall"}.
#{c}, %s%s.
#$_"%c;puts$'+"Go to the store and buy some more"+$&
I could not restrain myself from trying to reduce it further.
Two eyesores that I found extremely annoying were:
- The space between the ~/s/ and until.
- The n=0; initialization, which is not needed in Perl.
Can anything be done about them?
To get rid of the wretched space, I tried reorganizing via:
n=0;$_="Take one down and pass it around, #{~/s/;c=n+=1," bottle#$& of
+ beer"," on the wall"}.
#{c}, %s%s.
#$_"%c until~/, 99\D+/;puts$'+"Go to the store and buy some more"+$&
Still a space before the until and still 175 strokes. Rats.
Chanting Eugene's "can't possibly work, try it anyway" mantra,
I changed ~/, 99\D+/ to /, 99\D+/ and it worked!
Though it now emits a "warning: regex literal in condition" message to stderr,
that does not matter to codegolf.
Another stroke shaved.
Not as I intended, but no matter.
Only one more needed to catch flagitious.
What about the n=0; initialization?
At this point, I remembered the Roman to Decimal challenge,
where I was able to avoid an initialization by hijacking the $.
variable.
Indeed, if you want a numeric variable initialized to a known value,
that is the only built-in variable Ruby makes available.
Given my program is four lines in length, $. is initialized to
the value four. So I scribbled this down during my lunchtime walk to
Neutral Bay today:
n=0;n+=1
4-$.-=1
Hmmm, well that's clearly one stroke less. But will it work?
Or will Ruby complain when the $. "line number" becomes negative?
Nope, not a whimper about a negative line number.
So, much to my surprise, I've now tied
flagitious for the Ruby lead on 173 strokes:
$_="Take one down and pass it around, #{~/s/;c=4-$.-=1," bottle#$& of
+beer"," on the wall"}.
#{c}, %s%s.
#$_"%c until/, 99\D+/;puts$'+"Go to the store and buy some more"+$&
Update: an alternative 173 using Ruby symbols:
$_="Take one down and pass it around, #{c=4-$.-=1," bottle#{c&&:s} of
+beer"," on the wall"}.
#{c}, %s%s.
#$_"%c until/, 99\D+/;puts$'+"Go to the store and buy some more"+$&
Update: Note that dmd compressed my 173 stroke solution above to 168 by using Ruby compression ...
and -- as indicated at Re^3: Compression in Golf: Part III -- it seems highly likely that Ruby golf maestro flagitious
used Ruby compression in his 173 stroke solution! ... which, after years of painstaking effort,
makes my uncompressed 173-stroker above my best ever Ruby golf performance.
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