Generate letters to represent number using ruby?

Question

I would like to generate a sequence of letters i.e. \"A\", \"DE\" \"GJE\", etc. that correspond to a number. The first 26 are pretty easy so 3 returns \"C\", 26 returns \"Z\

Answer 1

Here is a short performant recursion based solution

class Numeric
  # 'z' is placed in the begining of the array because 26 % 26 is 0 not 26
  Alph = ['z'] + ("a".."y").to_a

  def to_alph

    # if self is 0 or negative return a blank string.
    # this is also used to end the recursive chain of to_alph calls
    # so don't replace this with raising an error or returning anything else

    return '' if self < 1

    # (otherwise) return two concatenated strings:
    # the right side is the letter for self modules 26
    # the left side is comprised of:
    #  1. minus one, because this is not a zero-based numbering system.
    #     therefore, round numbers (26, 52...) should return one digit 'z'
    #     instead of two digits 'aa' or 'ba'.
    #  2. divide by 26 and call to_alph on that.
    #     this repeats recursively for every digit of the final string,
    #     plus once more that will return '' to end the recursion chain.

    return ((self - 1) / 26).to_alph + Alph[self % 26]
  end
end

Answer 2

I liked this answer from: https://stackoverflow.com/a/17785576/514483

number.to_s(26).tr("0123456789abcdefghijklmnopq", "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ")