Exercise 1: 99 Bottles of Beer

Let’s put all your new Java skills to good use with something practical. We need a class with a main(), an int and a String variable, a while loop, and an if test. A little more polish, and you’ll be building that business backend in no time. But before you look at the code on this page, think for a moment about how you would code that classic children’s favorite, “99 bottles of beer.”

There’s still one little flaw in our code. It compiles and runs, but the output isn’t 100% perfect. See if you can spot the flaw , and fix it.

public class BeerSong {
	public static void main (String[] args) {
		int beerNum = 99;
		String word = “bottles”;
		while (beerNum > 0) {
			if (beerNum == 1) {
				word = “bottle”; // singular, as in ONE bottle.
			}
			System.out.println(beerNum + “ ” + word + “ of beer on the wall”);
			System.out.println(beerNum + “ ” + word + “ of beer.”);
			System.out.println(“Take one down.”);
			System.out.println(“Pass it around.”);
			beerNum = beerNum - 1;
			if (beerNum > 0) {
				System.out.println(beerNum + “ ” + word + “ of beer on the wall”);
			} else {
				System.out.println(“No more bottles of beer on the wall”);
			} // end else
		} // end while loop
	} // end main method
} // end class