After applying the new terminating regex to Ruby via the following 175 stroker:

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"+$&
[download]

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"+$&
[download]

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
[download]

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"+$&
[download]

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"+$&
[download]

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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