Code Contest II: The Belching Competition

Weedpacket

I've got to come up with the task for this have I? There were three I seriously considered, but opted for this one:

Task: A program that writes the lyrics to "Ten Green Bottles" (or "99 Bottles of Beer" or whatever the local cultural equivalent is). A typical verse of "Ten Green Bottles" is

Six green bottles
Hanging on the wall.
Six green bottles
Hanging on the wall.
And if one green bottle
Should accidentally fall
There'll be five green bottles
Hanging on the wall.

(No, I don't know how you hang bottles on walls. Nail them there, I guess.)

Goal: As before (and you will be expected to explain it afterwards). Only PHP is counted when it comes to judging "length", and complexity and obscurity are preferred over mere massivity.

Restrictions: The lyrics, the whole lyrics, and nowt but the lyrics (i.e,. no error messages or stray chracters).

Again, HTML is allowed (including CSS but not Javascript), but databases are not; extensions have to be admitted to in advance, but code that can be run on a core PHP system is easier to check for correctness 🙂. Code should run clean even when error_reporting is set to E_ALL (this is a test of PHP coding ability, after all.)

Yes, I am pedantic; mathematicians often are.

Bonus credit for (a) using proper grammar and punctuation (including capitalisation), (b) using words instead of numerals, (c) Special Circumstances, (d) bribes of at least €10.

Mordecai

Here's a little starter. This is about as simple as this script can get that still gets all the points:

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$numary = array("no","one","two","three","four","five","six","seven","eight","nine","ten");
$verse = "[X] green bottle[suffix]\n".
         "Hanging on the wall.\n".
         "[X] green bottle[suffix]\n".
         "Hanging on the wall.\n".
         "And if one green bottle\n".
         "Should accidentally fall\n".
         "There'll be [X-1] green bottle[suffix2]\n".
         "Hanging on the wall.\n\n";
for ($i = 10; $i > 1; $i --) {
  if ($i > 1) {
    $suffix = "s";
  } else {
    $suffix = "";
  }
  if (($i-2) > 1) {
    $suffix2 = "s";
  } else {
    $suffix2 = "";
  }
  $versenum = str_replace("[X]",ucwords($numary[$i-1]),$verse);
  $versenum = str_replace("[X-1]",$numary[$i-2],$versenum);
  $versenum = str_replace("[suffix]",$suffix,$versenum);
  $versenum = str_replace("[suffix2]",$suffix2,$versenum);
  echo(nl2br($versenum));
}
?>

Edit: I added in a second suffix, since "one green bottles" is not correct grammar (grammar = extra, ya know).

Weedpacket

Aye, 'tis a good kickoff; a model answer for anyone wanting an explicit example. A little easy to understand, however 🙂.

Mordecai

I wasn't really going for hard there, I just wanted to give a pretty easy example for anyone who might want to try.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by Mordecai
I wasn't really going for hard there, I just wanted to give a pretty easy example for anyone who might want to try.

No; yes; I figured as much.

jimson

<?php
function num2txt( $num ) {
	$base1 = array(
		0	=>	'',
		1	=>	'one',
		2	=>	'two',
		3	=>	'three',
		4	=>	'four',
		5	=>	'five',
		6	=>	'six',
		7	=>	'seven',
		8	=>	'eight',
		9	=>	'nine',
		10	=>	'ten',
		11	=>	'eleven',
		12	=>	'twelve');

$base2 = array(
	2	=>	'twen',
	3	=>	'thir',
	5	=>	'fif',
	8	=>	'eigh');

$num = (string) $num;

if( $num <= 12 ) {
	return $base1[$num];
} elseif ( $num[0] == '1') {
	return	isset( $base2[$num[1]] ) ?
				$base2[$num[1]].'teen' :
					$base1[$num[1]].'teen';
} else {
	$pre =  $num[1] == '0' ? '' : ' ';
	return	(isset( $base2[$num[0]] ) ?
				$base2[$num[0]].'ty' :
					$base1[$num[0]].'ty').$pre.$base1[$num[1]];
}
}

// so to extend this to support thousand, hundred, million, billion is quite easy already...
// just break the number to 3 e.g. 9999999 to 9 999 999 and push the 2 numbers into
// this function and you get what i mean... :D

static $bottleLast = 'no';
for( $i=1; $i<100; $i++ ) {
	$bottleNow	=	num2txt($i);
	$r[2] = $r[4] = $r[8] = 'Hanging on the wall.';
	$r[1] = $r[3] = ucfirst( $bottleNow ).' green bottle'.($i!=1 ? 's' : null);
	$r[5] = 'Then if one green bottle';
	$r[6] = 'Should accidentally fall';
	$r[7] = "There'll be $bottleLast green bottle".($i<3 ? null : 's');
	$bottleLast	=	$bottleNow;
	ksort($r);
	$s[$i] = implode('<br>', $r);
}
krsort($s);
$show = implode('<br><br>', $s);
echo $show;
?>

how about this... i think quite easy to understand...
em.. how you judge... 😃
... i think it can be optimized a bit... wish to give some pointer...... ?

Elizabeth

No, no jimson- you're supposed to make it as confusing and hard to figure out as possible 🙂 - Maybe we should be calling this the coding anti-contest 🙂

-Elizabeth

jimson

weedpackect will judge by the logic of programming ....
...
🙁

if coding_anti-contest == true then why should code be clean... and E_ALL (this is a test of PHP coding ability, after all.)

is this coding anti contest?

Weedpacket

The First Contest should give you a few more examples. The advice I give about E_ALL is so that it's easy for anyone to check that the programs work by just running it through PHP and seeing what it outputs.

Anyone can write horrible and confusing code that spews errors; it's more challenging to write correct code (even if it's ugly); more challenging still to write correc code that's a joy to read. But it takes cunning to write downright evil horrible code that is designed to confuse the reader while still running correctly - because the author has to outwit the reader while still playing by the rules of the language!

(As Bunkermaster pointed out in the previous competition, code produced by source code obfuscators are ineligible.)

BuzzLY

Just to clarify... not every contest has to be code that's impossible to read. This could just as easily have been "write the smallest program you possibly can..."

However, that being said, this is a good contest 🙂 May the best (or worst 😉) coder win 😃

jimson

i have the same thought... buzz... LY

BuzzLY

This should work just by copying and pasting into your favorite text editor. Save it as bob.php, and load it up on your browser.

For fun, put in a parameter at the end. Here it is on my server:

www.ultimatespin.com/projects/bob.php?num=472

You can theoretically go up to 999,999,999,999,999 (that's 999 trillion), but be prepared to wait a while for that one 😉 Please don't load a large number on my server -- I don't want to crash it, or cause it to slow down. My ISP would have my hide.

[edit] I limited the one on my server to 999 or less... so those of you thinking of trying 9 billion, forget it 😃

Here we go:

<<<code removed -- click here to view the current file source.>>>

260F2447FF4C53B!

BuzzLY

By the way, WeedPacket... you are a geek. Therefore, I know you are writing code for this one, even though you can't enter. I'd like to see it when all is said and done... 😉

Elizabeth

Buzz.. I'm quite impressed - geez does that thing do your laundry for you too?

-Elizabeth

planetsim

Buzz wat happened to going to zero..
When i sang that song long long ago in a time that only little ones can remember.

Anyways.. im pretty sure there is a verse missing like

999 bottles of beer in my gut
999 bottles of beer
Spew one up, clean it up
998 bottles of beer in my gut.

BuzzLY

Thanks Zabby. It doesn't do my laundry, but it does do windows.

Sim, I have to keep one beer on the wall for later. Jeez... I'm not a lush! 😉

I made the change. It now counts down to zero. Jeez you guys are sticklers!

Weedpacket

Originally posted by BuzzLY
By the way, WeedPacket... you are a geek. Therefore, I know you are writing code for this one, even though you can't enter. I'd like to see it when all is said and done... 😉

Actually, I wasn't, though I guess I should have

124C41

Notice: Undefined index: QUERY_STRING on line 43. Ouch!

BuzzLY

Hmmm... I fixed it... but I have error reporting set to E_ALL on my machine, and I did not see that Notice. What different setting would you have that shows it? Hmmm... Anyway, I am now using REQUEST_URI, so we should be ok.

As for your code, 124C41... are you following my coding standard? Or did you make up your own? If you are following my code, then it seems you are missing something there. What gives? If it's your own code, I'm a little stumped 🙂

BuzzLY

Haha... I found another glitch... such is the life a programmer, eh? Weed, do I lose points for fixing my code after posting it? You never really said anything about that, so I hastily put it up. I suppose I really should have bug-tested it thoroughly!

Anyhow, the "glitch" is not so much a bug as an anomaly. The code used to parse the numbers into English hiccups when it hits one thousand. It lists 1000 as "ten hundred" and 1,000,000 as "ten hundred thousand." Of course, those are technically correct, but not my desired result. So, I am going to stick a little fix in there to adjust it.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by BuzzLY
Hmmm... I fixed it... but I have error reporting set to E_ALL on my machine, and I did not see that Notice. What different setting would you have that shows it? Hmmm... Anyway, I am now using REQUEST_URI, so we should be ok.

I'm using IIS, but note that I saved it as "tgb.php" and called it as "http://localhost/tgb.php".

As for your code, 124C41... are you following my coding standard? Or did you make up your own? If you are following my code, then it seems you are missing something there. What gives? If it's your own code, I'm a little stumped 🙂

Oh, I'm just joshing ... (and keeping the thread bumped). The "124C41" Is from the title of a novel which as far as I can tell exists solely so that there could be a pun on the title on the last page.

As for post-entry edits, I reckon it's fair enough. Presumably there are people beavering away on something and why should they get more time than someone who gets their version in early? The alternative would have been to post a whole new version - not that that's stopping anyone from putting up two (as I did in the first contest).

Fact is, I'm thinking of opening the next contest out even wider (assuming I'm - er, unofficiating(?)). Okay, so I will write something for this after all - it will be a little different from my previous (for one thing, it will do Ten Green Bottles, not "Hello World" - a not insignificant distinction).