Programming Riddle: How might you translate an Excel column name to a number?

Question

I was recently asked in a job interview to resolve a programming puzzle that I thought it would be interesting to share. It\'s about translating Excel column letters to actu

Answer 1

Another Java:

public static int convertNameToIndex(String columnName) {
    int index = 0;
    char[] name = columnName.toUpperCase().toCharArray();

    for(int i = 0; i < name.length; i++) {
        index *= 26;
        index += name[i] - 'A' + 1;
    }

    return index;
}