Learning R: Christmas Coding Challenge


In this year’s end post I will give you a little programming challenge!

Everybody knows the Christmas song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”! Your task is to write an R script that creates the lyrics!

The lyrics are the following:

On the first day of Christmas
My true love gave to me:
A partridge in a pear tree.

On the second day of Christmas
My true love gave to me:
Two turtle doves and
A partridge in a pear tree.

On the third day of Christmas
My true love gave to me:
Three french hens
Two turtle doves and
A partridge in a pear tree.

On the forth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me:
Four calling birds
Three french hens
Two turtle doves and
A partridge in a pear tree.

On the Twelfth day of Christmas,
My true love gave to me:
Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five golden rings
Four calling birds
Three french hens
Two turtle doves and
A partridge in a pear tree.

Your challenge is to write an R script to create the above lyrics. I provide the building blocks here as a starting point:

gifts <- c("A partridge in a pear tree.", "Two turtle doves and", "Three french hens", "Four calling birds", "Five golden rings", "Six geese a-laying", "Seven swans a-swimming", "Eight maids a-milking", "Nine ladies dancing", "Ten lords a-leaping", "Eleven pipers piping", "Twelve drummers drumming")
days <- c("first", "second", "third", "fourth", "fifth", "sixth", "seventh", "eighth", "ninth", "tenth", "eleventh", "twelfth")

Hint: for the output you can use the cat function, to concatenate (combine) strings you can use paste and for a new line use "\n".

I will provide my solution below but you should give it a try… Have fun!

Here is my solution, which I also posted on Rosetta Code: The Twelve Days of Christmas:

for (i in 1:length(days)) {
  cat("On the", days[i], "day of Christmas\n")
  cat("My true love gave to me:\n")
  cat(paste(gifts[i:1], collapse = "\n"), "\n\n")
}

I am always amazed at how elegantly one can code with R! If you have other solutions please don’t hesitate to share them with us in the comment section below.


I wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and A Happy New Year! (Hopefully, 2021 will be a better one than 2020!)
And above all: Please stay safe!

We will be taking our Christmas break and will be back on January 12, 2021!

19 thoughts on “Learning R: Christmas Coding Challenge”

  1. I didn’t look at yours but they seem to be variants of the same idea

    s <- "On the "
    l <- " day of Chirstmas\nMy true love gave to me:\n"
    cat(sapply(1:length(days), function(x)paste0(s,days[x],l,paste0(gifts[x:1],collapse = "\n"),"\n\n")))
    
  2. Or, as a oneliner

    cat(sapply(1:length(days), function(x)paste0("On the ",days[x]," day of Chirstmas\nMy true love gave to me:\n",paste0(gifts[x:1],collapse = "\n"),"\n\n")))

      1. No it wasn’t intentional. Sorry, I didn’t notice it. It is due the the default separator being ” ” for cat. This fixes it.

        cat(sapply(1:length(days), function(x)paste0(s,days[x],l,paste0(gifts[x:1],collapse = "\n"),"\n\n")),sep = '')

        Thanks for the fun puzzle!

        1. And for the one liner

          cat(sapply(1:length(days), function(x)paste0("On the ",days[x]," day of Chirstmas\nMy true love gave to me:\n",paste0(gifts[x:1],collapse = "\n"),"\n\n")),sep = '')

  3. Here is my solution, I also went for the loop and I’m very glad I got it right! It was fun and useful:

    for(i in 1:12) {
      cat(paste("On the",days[i],"day of Christmas","\n","my true love sent to me","\n"),paste(gifts[seq(i,1)],"\n"))
    }
    

    The most evident (to me) problem with my code, after reading yours, is that I used 12 instead of the general solution you provide (length(days)).

      1. I closed down R Studio and re-run the code in a new session. The verses are correctly separated in lines, exactly as in the excerpt that you provided in the blog post.
        As for the indentation, I noticed it as well, but I can’t figure out what it is caused by.

        1. Strange, I get:

          ## On the first day of Christmas 
          ##  my true love sent to me 
          ##  A partridge in a pear tree. 
          ## On the second day of Christmas 
          ##  my true love sent to me 
          ##  Two turtle doves and 
          ##  A partridge in a pear tree. 
          ## On the third day of Christmas 
          ##  my true love sent to me 
          ##  Three french hens 
          ##  Two turtle doves and 
          ##  A partridge in a pear tree. 
          ## On the fourth day of Christmas 
          ##  my true love sent to me 
          ##  Four calling birds 
          ##  Three french hens 
          ##  Two turtle doves and 
          ##  A partridge in a pear tree.
          ...
          
          1. Now I got what you mean: each verse is separated from the other by an empty line.
            It seems that the way I structured my code does not allow me to obtain that.
            I must change it somehow.

  4. Here is my solution, i tried solution using generic function with dependent package english

    library(english)
    gifts <- c("A partridge in a pear tree.", "Two turtle doves and", "Three french hens", "Four calling birds", "Five golden rings", "Six geese a-laying", "Seven swans a-swimming", "Eight maids a-milking", "Nine ladies dancing", "Ten lords a-leaping", "Eleven pipers piping", "Twelve drummers drumming")
    
    ccc = function(days=12){
      for(j in 1:days){
        cat(paste0("On the ", ordinal(j), " day of Christmas\n"))
        cat("My true love gave to me:", "\n")
        cat(paste(gifts[j:1], collapse = "\n"), "\n\n")  
      }
    }
    
    ccc(12)
    
  5. library (english)
    
    
    gifts <- c("A partridge in a pear tree.", "Two turtle doves and", "Three french hens", "Four calling birds", "Five golden rings", "Six geese a-laying", "Seven swans a-swimming", "Eight maids a-milking", "Nine ladies dancing", "Ten lords a-leaping", "Eleven pipers piping", "Twelve drummers drumming")
    
    
    ccc = function(days=12){
      for(j in 1:days){
        cat(paste0("On the ", ordinal(j), " day of Christmas\n"))
        cat("My true love gave to me:", "\n")
        cat(paste(gifts[j:1], collapse = "\n"), "\n\n")  
      }
    }
    
    ccc(12)
    

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