99 Bottles of Beer

Sponsorship the way you would do it

99 Bottles of Beer is a popular song to sing on very long car trips, as it has a very repetetive format which is easy to memorize, and can take several hours to sing. A common programming excersize is to write a computer program which outputs the lyrics to the song algorithmically.

The verse format is very formulaic, and can be expressed as follows:

From 99 down to 1:
Bottles of beer on the wall
bottles of beer!
Take one down, pass it around bottles of beer on the wall!

The penultimate line is sometimes changed to "if one bottle should happen to fall" and there is much variation in the final verse. One common final verse is:

No bottles of beer on the wall!
No bottles of beer!
Go to the store and buy some more
99 bottles of beer on the wall!

In a similar vein, there is Ten in a Bed. From 10 down to 1:
There were in a bed and the little one said,
"Roll over! Roll over!"
So they all rolled over and one fell out;
There were in a bed etc.
(until)
There was one in the bed and the little one said:
"That's fine!"

Other variants

99 Green bottles

External Links: http://99-bottles-of-beer.ls-la.net A collection of programs which output the lyrics to the song.