Generating an array of letters in the alphabet

Question

Is there an easy way to generate an array containing the letters of the alphabet in C#? It\'s not too hard to do it by hand, but I was wondering if there was a built in way

Answer 1

char[] alphabet = Enumerable.Range('A', 26).Select(x => (char)x).ToArray();

Answer 2

Assuming you mean the letters of the English alphabet...

    for ( int i = 0; i < 26; i++ )
    {
        Console.WriteLine( Convert.ToChar( i + 65 ) );
    }
    Console.WriteLine( "Press any key to continue." );
    Console.ReadKey();

Answer 3

Surprised no one has suggested a yield solution:

public static IEnumerable<char> Alphabet()
{
    for (char letter = 'A'; letter <= 'Z'; letter++)
    {
        yield return letter;
    }
}

Example:

foreach (var c in Alphabet())
{
    Console.Write(c);
}

Answer 4

I wrote this to get the MS excel column code (A,B,C, ..., Z, AA, AB, ..., ZZ, AAA, AAB, ...) based on a 1-based index. (Of course, switching to zero-based is simply leaving off the column--; at the start.)

public static String getColumnNameFromIndex(int column)
{
    column--;
    String col = Convert.ToString((char)('A' + (column % 26)));
    while (column >= 26)
    {
        column = (column / 26) -1;
        col = Convert.ToString((char)('A' + (column % 26))) + col;
    }
    return col;
}

Answer 5

for (char letter = 'A'; letter <= 'Z'; letter++)
{
     Debug.WriteLine(letter);
}

Answer 6

Note also, the string has a operator[] which returns a Char, and is an IEnumerable<char>, so for most purposes, you can use a string as a char[]. Hence:

string alpha = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVQXYZ";
for (int i =0; i < 26; ++i)
{  
     Console.WriteLine(alpha[i]);
}

foreach(char c in alpha)
{  
     Console.WriteLine(c);
}