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

This version is purely functional and permits alternative 'code' sequences, for example if you wanted to only uses the letters 'A' to 'C'. In Scala, with a suggestion from dcsobral.

def columnNumber(name: String) = {
    val code = 'A' to 'Z'

    name.foldLeft(0) { (sum, letter) =>
        (sum * code.length) + (code.indexOf(letter) + 1)
    }
}