How to map character to numeric position in java?

Question

E.g.

• input: [\'A\', \'Z\', \'F\', \'D\', ...]
• output: [0, 25, 5, 3, ...]

In C I\'d just subtract the char from \'A\', but I don\'t seem

Answer 1

Here's different implementation which runs in logarithmic time:

Class

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Collections;

public class CharacterIndex {
    private char[] characters = new char[]{'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z'};
    public int index(char character) {
        assert characters != null;
        return Arrays.binarySearch(characters, Character.toUpperCase(character));                
    }
}

Unit Test

import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;

import static junit.framework.Assert.assertEquals;

public class CharacterIndexTest {
    private CharacterIndex characterIndex;
    @Before
    public void createIndex() {
        characterIndex = new CharacterIndex();
    }
    @Test
    public void testIndexOfLetterA() {
        assertEquals(0, characterIndex.index('A'));
        assertEquals(0, characterIndex.index('a'));
    }
    @Test
    public void testNotALetter() {
        assertEquals(-1, characterIndex.index('1'));
    }

}