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

…just needed a solution for PHP. This is what I came up with:

/**
 * Calculates the column number for a given column name.
 *
 * @param string $columnName the column name: "A", "B", …, "Y", "Z", "AA", "AB" … "AZ", "BA", … "ZZ", "AAA", …
 *
 * @return int the column number for the given column name: 1 for "A", 2 for "B", …, 25 for "Y", 26 for "Z", 27 for "AA", … 52 for "AZ", 53 for "BA", … 703 for "AAA", …
 */
function getColumnNumber($columnName){
    //  the function's result
    $columnNumber = 0;

    //  at first we need to lower-case the string because we calculate with the ASCII value of (lower-case) "a"
    $columnName = strtolower($columnName);
    //  ASCII value of letter "a"
    $aAsciiValue = ord('a') - 1;

    //  iterate all characters by splitting the column name
    foreach (str_split($columnName) as $character) {
        //  determine ASCII value of current character and substract with that one from letter "a"
        $characterNumberValue = ord($character) - $aAsciiValue;

        //  through iteration and multiplying we finally get the previous letters' values on base 26
        //  then we just add the current character's number value
        $columnNumber = $columnNumber * 26 + $characterNumberValue;
    }

    //  return the result
    return $columnNumber;
}

Of course the script can be shortened a little by just combining some stuff into one line of code within the foreach loop:

//  …
$columnNumber = $columnNumber * 26 + ord($character) - ord('a') + 1;
//  …