Programming Riddle: How might you translate an Excel column name to a number?

Question

I was recently asked in a job interview to resolve a programming puzzle that I thought it would be interesting to share. It\'s about translating Excel column letters to actu

Answer 1

Wikipedia has good explanations and algos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexavigesimal

public static String toBase26(int value){
    // Note: This is a slightly modified version of the Alphabet-only conversion algorithm

    value = Math.abs(value);
    String converted = "";

    boolean iteration = false;

    // Repeatedly divide the number by 26 and convert the
    // remainder into the appropriate letter.
    do {
        int remainder = value % 26;

        // Compensate for the last letter of the series being corrected on 2 or more iterations.
        if (iteration && value < 25) {
            remainder--;
        }

        converted = (char)(remainder + 'A') + converted;
        value = (value - remainder) / 26;

        iteration = true;
    } while (value > 0);

    return converted;    
}

Answer 2

Caveat: both of these versions assume only uppercase letters A to Z. Anything else causes a miscalculation. It wouldn't be hard to add a bit of error checking and/or uppercasing to improve them.

Scala

def excel2Number(excel : String) : Int = 
  (0 /: excel) ((accum, ch) => accum * 26 + ch - 'A' + 1)

Haskell

excel2Number :: String -> Int
excel2Number = flip foldl 0 $ \accum ch -> accum * 26 + fromEnum ch - fromEnum 'A' + 1

Answer 3

Slightly related, the better challenge is the other way around: given the column number, find the column label as string.

Qt version as what I implemented for KOffice:

QString columnLabel( unsigned column )
{
  QString str;
  unsigned digits = 1;
  unsigned offset = 0;

  column--;
  for( unsigned limit = 26; column >= limit+offset; limit *= 26, digits++ )
    offset += limit;

  for( unsigned c = column - offset; digits; --digits, c/=26 )
    str.prepend( QChar( 'A' + (c%26) ) );

  return str;
}

Answer 4

Another Java:

public static int convertNameToIndex(String columnName) {
    int index = 0;
    char[] name = columnName.toUpperCase().toCharArray();

    for(int i = 0; i < name.length; i++) {
        index *= 26;
        index += name[i] - 'A' + 1;
    }

    return index;
}

Answer 5

Get the column number from its name

Java:

public int getColNum (String colName) {

    //remove any whitespace
    colName = colName.trim();

    StringBuffer buff = new StringBuffer(colName);

    //string to lower case, reverse then place in char array
    char chars[] = buff.reverse().toString().toLowerCase().toCharArray();

    int retVal=0, multiplier=0;

    for(int i = 0; i < chars.length;i++){
        //retrieve ascii value of character, subtract 96 so number corresponds to place in alphabet. ascii 'a' = 97 
        multiplier = (int)chars[i]-96;
        //mult the number by 26^(position in array)
        retVal += multiplier * Math.pow(26, i);
    }
    return retVal;
}

Answer 6

Does it help to think of the string as the reverse of the column number in base 26 with digits represented by A, B, ... Z?