Increment a string with letters?

Question

I need to increment a string from.. let\'s say aaa to zzz and write every incrementation in the console (is incrementation even a word?). It would go s

Answer 1

This function gives 3 characters based on a number:

function n2s (n) {
    var s = '';
    while (s.length < 3) {
        s = String.fromCharCode(97 + n % 26) + s;
        n = Math.floor(n / 26);
    }
    return s;
}

To print strings from "aaa" to "zzz":

var zzz = Math.pow(26, 3) - 1;
for (var n = 0; n <= zzz; n++) {
    console.log(n2s(n));
}

function n2s (n) {
    var s = '';
    while (s.length < 3) {
        s = String.fromCharCode(97 + n % 26) + s;
        n = Math.floor(n / 26);
    }
    return s;
}

var result = [];
var zzz = Math.pow(26, 3) - 1;
for (var n = 0; n <= zzz; n++) {
    result.push(n2s(n));
}
document.body.innerHTML = result.join(' ');

Ask for details :-)

---

Improvements

Performances compared to the accepted answer: http://jsperf.com/10-to-26.

// string to number: s2n("ba") -> 26
function s2n(s) {
    var pow, n = 0, i = 0;
    while (i++ < s.length) {
        pow = Math.pow(26, s.length - i);
        n += (s.charCodeAt(i - 1) - 97) * pow;
    }
    return n;
}

// number to string: n2s(26) -> "ba"
function n2s(n) {
    var s = '';
    if (!n) s = 'a'; 
    else while (n) {
        s = String.fromCharCode(97 + n % 26) + s;
        n = Math.floor(n / 26);
    }
    return s;
}

// pad("ba", 4) -> "aaba"
function pad (s, n) {
    while (s.length < n) s = 'a' + s;
    return s;
}

Usage:

var from = s2n('azx');
var to = s2n('baa');
for (var n = from; n <= to; n++) {
    console.log(pad(n2s(n), 3));
}

Output:

azx
azy
azz
baa

---

Recursivity

Probably less efficient in terms of memory use or computation time: https://jsperf.com/10-to-26/4.

function n2s(n) {
    var next = Math.floor(n / 26);
    return (
        next ? n2s(next) : ''
    ) + (
        String.fromCharCode(97 + n % 26)
    );
}

function s2n(s) {
    return s.length && (
        (s.charCodeAt(0) - 97)
    ) * (
        Math.pow(26, s.length - 1)
    ) + (
        s2n(s.slice(1))
    );
}