Tag: programming

I was looking for a good way to convert a number to the Excel column letter, for example:

1 -> A
26 -> Z
27 -> AA
28 -> AB
800 -> ADT

etc.

After searching on Google, I could not find any algorithm I want. (The closest one can handle up to two letters, i.e., ZZ. It will crash if the number is too large.). So I ended up creating my own.

Basically, you can think of this problem as a 26 based number conversion. Here is the php version. It should be pretty simple to convert it to a different language. Let me know if you have any problem.

function columnLetter($c){

    $c = intval($c);
    if ($c < = 0) return '';

    $letter = '';
             
    while($c != 0){
       $p = ($c - 1) % 26;
       $c = intval(($c - $p) / 26);
       $letter = chr(65 + $p) . $letter;
    }
    
    return $letter;
        
}

Usage:
columnLetter(1303618093);    //DERRICK

Note that if you prefer lower cases rather than upper cases, you can simply replace 65 by 96 in the code.

Enjoy~!

–Derrick