How can I print out all possible letter combinations a given phone number can represent?

Question

I just tried for my first programming interview and one of the questions was to write a program that given a 7 digit telephone number, could print all possible combinations

Answer 1

This version in C# is reasonably efficient, and it works for non-western digits (like "۱۲۳۴۵۶۷" for example).

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    string phoneNumber = null;
    if (1 <= args.Length)
        phoneNumber = args[0];
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(phoneNumber))
    {
        Console.WriteLine("No phone number supplied.");
        return;
    }
    else
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Alphabetic phone numbers for \"{0}\":", phoneNumber);
        foreach (string phoneNumberText in GetPhoneNumberCombos(phoneNumber))
            Console.Write("{0}\t", phoneNumberText);
    }
}

public static IEnumerable GetPhoneNumberCombos(string phoneNumber)
{
    phoneNumber = RemoveNondigits(phoneNumber);
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(phoneNumber))
        return new List();

    char[] combo = new char[phoneNumber.Length];
    return GetRemainingPhoneNumberCombos(phoneNumber, combo, 0);
}

private static string RemoveNondigits(string phoneNumber)
{
    if (phoneNumber == null)
        return null;
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    foreach (char nextChar in phoneNumber)
        if (char.IsDigit(nextChar))
            sb.Append(nextChar);
    return sb.ToString();
}

private static IEnumerable GetRemainingPhoneNumberCombos(string phoneNumber, char[] combo, int nextDigitIndex)
{
    if (combo.Length - 1 == nextDigitIndex)
    {
        foreach (char nextLetter in phoneNumberAlphaMapping[(int)char.GetNumericValue(phoneNumber[nextDigitIndex])])
        {
            combo[nextDigitIndex] = nextLetter;
            yield return new string(combo);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        foreach (char nextLetter in phoneNumberAlphaMapping[(int)char.GetNumericValue(phoneNumber[nextDigitIndex])])
        {
            combo[nextDigitIndex] = nextLetter;
            foreach (string result in GetRemainingPhoneNumberCombos(phoneNumber, combo, nextDigitIndex + 1))
                yield return result;
        }
    }

}

private static char[][] phoneNumberAlphaMapping = new char[][]
{
    new char[] { '0' },
    new char[] { '1' },
    new char[] { 'a', 'b', 'c' },
    new char[] { 'd', 'e', 'f' },
    new char[] { 'g', 'h', 'i' },
    new char[] { 'j', 'k', 'l' },
    new char[] { 'm', 'n', 'o' },
    new char[] { 'p', 'q', 'r', 's' },
    new char[] { 't', 'u', 'v' },
    new char[] { 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z' }
};