How to increment the letter of alphabet by 2 or more instead of 1 each time?

Question

I want to increment a letter by 2 each time, e.g.

// increment by 1
$alphabet = "A";
$alphabet++; // 'B'

I want something like

// increment by 2
$alphabet = "A";
$alphabet+=2; // 'C'

How can i do this? I tried the code above but encounter non numeric value.

There is no magic "addition" of characters, just multiple-increments.... if you want that, then create a `function incrementor(&$characters, $counter) { do $characters++; } while($counter-- > 0); }`, calling it like `incrementor($alphabet, 2);` — Mark Baker, Nov 24 '17 at 17:03
@MarkBaker Do you mean, i need to increment two times and there's no other better way to do this? — Crazy, Nov 24 '17 at 17:05
@splash - works until $alphabet is `Y` or `Z`, then it gets rather different to the functionality that `++` would give — Mark Baker, Nov 24 '17 at 17:07
@splash58 If it's wanted for Excel spreadsheets, then it could go as high as IV or even XFD for the latest versions of MS Excel — Mark Baker, Nov 24 '17 at 17:40
@Mark XFD? What version is that? How many lines can it handle? Every single day I have to stitch together spreadsheets because I go above one million lines. — Andreas, Nov 24 '17 at 18:07
@Andreas That is a column limit (16,384 columns), 1,048,576 rows is the row limit for Excel2007 and above — Mark Baker, Nov 24 '17 at 18:58
@Mark ok. I thought it was something new. It would be great if they make it possible to swap columns for lines. I usually only need 200-300.000 more lines. — Andreas, Nov 24 '17 at 19:10
Perhaps relevant to researchers: https://stackoverflow.com/q/46095569/2943403 — mickmackusa, Apr 30 '18 at 07:45

Andreas · Answer 1 · 2017-11-24T17:15:00.083

2

You can have an array with the alphabet created by range.
The just echo the one you need with a counter.

$alphabet = range("A", "Z");
$i =0;

Echo $alphabet[$i];
$i =($i+25)%26;
Echo $alphabet[$i];

Edit Mark has a good point in comments above.
Added a mod calculation to keep it between A-Z.

In the code it's the ($i+25)%26; that is the increment value.

edited Nov 24 '17 at 17:15

answered Nov 24 '17 at 17:09

Andreas

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 24 '17 at 17:05

1

Use php chr and php ord

$alphabet = "A";
$ascii = ord($alphabet);
$ascii += 2;
echo $alphabet = chr($ascii);

answered Nov 24 '17 at 17:05

Niklesh Raut

2 Answers2