Is there an easy way to programmatically get the alphabet?

The array generated for table index titles may also be used. It does not use a for loop and has multi-language support.

NSMutableArray *alphabets = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithArray:[[UILocalizedIndexedCollation currentCollation] sectionIndexTitles]];

//Remove the last object (extra), '#' from the array.
[alphabets removeLastObject];

There's no quicker way than typing them all out, unless you cut and paste my handy reference from below!

"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"

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For the sake of it, here's a longer way.

for (char a = 'a'; a <= 'z'; a++)
{
  [myArray addObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%c", a]];
}