Fastest function to generate Excel column letters in C#

Question

What is the fastest c# function that takes and int and returns a string containing a letter or letters for use in an Excel function? For example, 1 returns \"A\", 26 return

Answer 1

This is written in Java, but it's basically the same thing.

Here's code to compute the label for the column, in upper-case, with a 0-based index:

public static String findColChars(long index) {
    char[] ret = new char[64];
    for (int i = 0; i < ret.length; ++i) {
        int digit = ret.length - i - 1;
        long test = index - powerDown(i + 1);
        if (test < 0)
            break;
        ret[digit] = toChar(test / (long)(Math.pow(26, i)));
    }
    return new String(ret);
}

private static char toChar(long num) {
    return (char)((num % 26) + 65);
}

Here's code to compute 0-based index for the column from the upper-case label:

public static long findColIndex(String col) {
    long index = 0;
    char[] chars = col.toCharArray();
    for (int i = 0; i < chars.length; ++i) {
        int cur = chars.length - i - 1;
        index += (chars[cur] - 65) * Math.pow(26, i);
    }
    return index + powerDown(chars.length);
}

private static long powerDown(int limit) {
    long acc = 0;
    while (limit > 1)
        acc += Math.pow(26, limit-- - 1);
    return acc;
}