I want to generate consecutive alphabetic strings from an integer index, which serve as automatic object names. I know how to generate base-26 from int32, which requires 7 digits. But this is not exactly what I want because for low indices I would still get 7 digits where I would like to get short names starting with a, b, c...
Suppressing leading zeros (a's) is also not an option because then the transition from one-digit to two-digit names is irregular:
a,..., z, ba, bb, bc,...,zy, zz, baa, bab,...
like in this code:
public static string autoVarName(int i)
{
string result = "";
do
{
int j = i % 26;
result = (char)('a'+j) + result;
i /= 26;
}
while (i>0);
return result;
}
What I would like to get is rather similar to how Excel generates column names:
a,..., z, aa, ab, ac,...,zy, zz, aaa, aab,...
I can't seem to be able to wrap my head around how to do this. Any search has just brought up true base-26 numbers. Does anyone know how to modify the above code to get what I want?
