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algorithmpuzzle

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

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 actual numbers, if you recall, Excel names its columns with letters from A to Z, and then the sequence goes AA, AB, AC... AZ, BA, BB, etc.

You have to write a function that accepts a string as a parameter (like "AABCCE") and returns the actual column number.

The solution can be in any language.

Solution

  • I wrote this ages ago for some Python script:

    def index_to_int(index):
    s = 0
    pow = 1
    for letter in index[::-1]:
        d = int(letter,36) - 9
        s += pow * d
        pow *= 26
    # excel starts column numeration from 1
    return s