Convert integer into its character equivalent, where 0 => a, 1 => b, etc

Question

I want to convert an integer into its character equivalent based on the alphabet. For example:

0 => a
1 => b
2 => c
3 => d

etc.

Answer 1

Assuming you want uppercase case letters:

function numberToLetter(num){
        var alf={
            '0': 'A', '1': 'B', '2': 'C', '3': 'D', '4': 'E', '5': 'F', '6': 'G'
        };
        if(num.length== 1) return alf[num] || ' ';
        return num.split('').map(numberToLetter);
    }

Example:

numberToLetter('023') is ["A", "C", "D"]

numberToLetter('5') is "F"

Answer 2

If you don't mind getting multi-character strings back, you can support arbitrary positive indices:

function idOf(i) {
    return (i >= 26 ? idOf((i / 26 >> 0) - 1) : '') +  'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'[i % 26 >> 0];
}

idOf(0) // a
idOf(1) // b
idOf(25) // z
idOf(26) // aa
idOf(27) // ab
idOf(701) // zz
idOf(702) // aaa
idOf(703) // aab

(Not thoroughly tested for precision errors :)

Answer 3

There you go: (a-zA-Z)

function codeToChar( number ) {
  if ( number >= 0 && number <= 25 ) // a-z
    number = number + 97;
  else if ( number >= 26 && number <= 51 ) // A-Z
    number = number + (65-26);
  else
    return false; // range error
  return String.fromCharCode( number );
}

input: 0-51, or it will return false (range error);

OR:

var codeToChar = function() {
  var abc = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".split("");
  return function( code ) {
    return abc[code];
  };
})();

returns undefined in case of range error. NOTE: the array will be created only once and because of closure it will be available for the the new codeToChar function. I guess it's even faster then the first method (it's just a lookup basically).

Answer 4

If you are looking for TypeScript working functions then follow

public numericValue = (alphaChar: any) => alphaChar.toUpperCase().charCodeAt(0) - 64;

public alphaValue = (numericDigit: any) => 
   String.fromCharCode(64 + numericDigit) : '';

You can make several checks like (numericDigit >= 1 && numericDigit <= 26) ? inside function body as per the requirements.

Answer 5

Use String.fromCharCode. This returns a string from a Unicode value, which matches the first 128 characters of ASCII.

var a = String.fromCharCode(97);

Answer 6

The only problemo with @mikemaccana's great solution is that it uses the binary >> operator which is costly, performance-wise. I suggest this modification to his great work as a slight improvement that your colleagues can perhaps read more easily.

const getColumnName = (i) => {
     const previousLetters = (i >= 26 ? getColumnName(Math.floor(i / 26) -1 ) : '');
     const lastLetter = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'[i % 26]; 
     return previousLetters + lastLetter;
}

Or as a one-liner

const getColumnName = i => (i >= 26 ? getColumnName(Math.floor(i / 26) -1 ) : '') + 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'[i % 26];

Example:

getColumnName(0); // "A"
getColumnName(1); // "B"
getColumnName(25); // "Z"
getColumnName(26); // "AA"
getColumnName(27); // "AB"
getColumnName(80085) // "DNLF"