How to get the next letter of the alphabet in Javascript?
Here is a function that does the same thing (except for upper case only, but that's easy to change) but uses slice
only once and is iterative rather than recursive. In a quick benchmark, it's about 4 times faster (which is only relevant if you make really heavy use of it!).
function nextString(str) {
if (! str)
return 'A' // return 'A' if str is empty or null
let tail = ''
let i = str.length -1
let char = str[i]
// find the index of the first character from the right that is not a 'Z'
while (char === 'Z' && i > 0) {
i--
char = str[i]
tail = 'A' + tail // tail contains a string of 'A'
}
if (char === 'Z') // the string was made only of 'Z'
return 'AA' + tail
// increment the character that was not a 'Z'
return str.slice(0, i) + String.fromCharCode(char.charCodeAt(0) + 1) + tail
}
// This will return A for Z and a for z.
function nextLetter(s){
return s.replace(/([a-zA-Z])[^a-zA-Z]*$/, function(a){
var c= a.charCodeAt(0);
switch(c){
case 90: return 'A';
case 122: return 'a';
default: return String.fromCharCode(++c);
}
});
}
A more comprehensive solution, which gets the next letter according to how MS Excel numbers it's columns... A B C ... Y Z AA AB ... AZ BA ... ZZ AAA
This works with small letters, but you can easily extend it for caps too.
getNextKey = function(key) {
if (key === 'Z' || key === 'z') {
return String.fromCharCode(key.charCodeAt() - 25) + String.fromCharCode(key.charCodeAt() - 25); // AA or aa
} else {
var lastChar = key.slice(-1);
var sub = key.slice(0, -1);
if (lastChar === 'Z' || lastChar === 'z') {
// If a string of length > 1 ends in Z/z,
// increment the string (excluding the last Z/z) recursively,
// and append A/a (depending on casing) to it
return getNextKey(sub) + String.fromCharCode(lastChar.charCodeAt() - 25);
} else {
// (take till last char) append with (increment last char)
return sub + String.fromCharCode(lastChar.charCodeAt() + 1);
}
}
return key;
};
my_string.substring(0, my_string.length - 1)
+ String.fromCharCode(my_string.charCodeAt(my_string.length - 1) + 1)