Generating an array of letters in the alphabet in C#

Question

Is there an easy way to generate an array containing the letters of the alphabet in C#? It's not too hard to do it by hand, but I was wondering if there was a built in way to do this.

Answer 1

I don't think there is a built in way, but I think the easiest would be

  char[] alpha = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".ToCharArray();

Answer 2

You could do something like this, based on the ascii values of the characters:

char[26] alphabet;

for(int i = 0; i <26; i++)
{
     alphabet[i] = (char)(i+65); //65 is the offset for capital A in the ascaii table
}

(See the table here.) You are just casting from the int value of the character to the character value - but, that only works for ascii characters not different languages etc.

EDIT: As suggested by Mehrdad in the comment to a similar solution, it's better to do this:

alphabet[i] = (char)(i+(int)('A'));

This casts the A character to it's int value and then increments based on this, so it's not hardcoded.

Answer 3

Assuming you mean the letters of the English alphabet...

    for ( int i = 0; i < 26; i++ )
    {
        Console.WriteLine( Convert.ToChar( i + 65 ) );
    }
    Console.WriteLine( "Press any key to continue." );
    Console.ReadKey();

Answer 4

My initial thoughts involved constructing an array based on the ANSI character code, looping/incrementing until one reached the end of the alphabet... but as Bob noted, probably the easiest solution is doing it manually. I'm guessing that any iterative solutions would be longer than the manual solution.

Answer 5

C# 3.0 :

char[] az = Enumerable.Range('a', 'z' - 'a' + 1).Select(i => (Char)i).ToArray();
foreach (var c in az)
{
    Console.WriteLine(c);
}

yes it does work even if the only overload of Enumerable.Range accepts int parameters ;-)

Answer 6

FYI, this question has been asked before with internationalization in mind.

Answer 7

"This casts the A character to it's int value and then increments based on this, so it's not hardcoded."

Which, is important. Just in case they decide to do away with that pesky 'j' or add something in between 'q' and 'r.' Hey, as long as 'lmnop' remains the same, I think the song will stay in tact...

Joking aside, I like Bob's method. KISS, guys.

Answer 8

Note also, the string has a operator[] which returns a Char, and is an IEnumerable<char>, so for most purposes, you can use a string as a char[]. Hence:

string alpha = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVQXYZ";
for (int i =0; i < 26; ++i)
{  
     Console.WriteLine(alpha[i]);
}

foreach(char c in alpha)
{  
     Console.WriteLine(c);
}

Answer 9

Thanks so much for this info

Answer 10

char alphaStart = Char.Parse("A"); char alphaEnd = Char.Parse("Z"); for(char i = alphaStart; i <= alphaEnd; i++) { string anchorLetter = i.ToString(); }

Answer 11

//generate a list of alphabet using csharp
//this recurcive function will return you
//a string with position of passed int
//say if pass 0 will return A ,1-B,2-C,.....,26-AA,27-AB,....,701-ZZ,702-AAA,703-AAB,...

static string CharacterIncrement(int colCount)
{
    int TempCount = 0;
    string returnCharCount = string.Empty;

    if (colCount <>
    {
        TempCount = colCount;
        char CharCount = Convert.ToChar((Convert.ToInt32('A') + TempCount));
        returnCharCount += CharCount;
        return returnCharCount;
    }
    else
    {
        var rev = 0;

        while (colCount >= 26)
        {
            colCount = colCount - 26;
            rev++;
        }

        returnCharCount += CharacterIncrement(rev-1);
        returnCharCount += CharacterIncrement(colCount);
        return returnCharCount;
    }
}

//--------this loop call this function---------//
int i = 0;
while (i <>
    {
        string CharCount = string.Empty;
        CharCount = CharacterIncrement(i);

        i++;
    }