Convert integer into its character equivilent in Javascript

Question

I want to convert an integer into its character equivalent based on the alphabet. For example:

0 => a
1 => b
2 => c
3 => d

etc. I could build an array and just look it up when I need it but I'm wondering if there's a built in function to do this for me? All the examples i've found via Google are working with ASCII values and not a characters position in the alphabet.

Cheers. :)

Answer 1

There you go: (a-zA-Z)

function codeToChar( number ) {
  if ( number >= 0 && number <= 25 ) // a-z
    number = number + 97;
  else if ( number >= 26 && number <= 51 ) // A-Z
    number = number + (65-26);
  else
    return false; // range error
  return String.fromCharCode( number );
}

input: 0-51, or it will return false (range error);

OR:

var codeToChar = function() {
  var abc = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".split("");
  return function( code ) {
    return abc[code];
  };
})();

returns undefined in case of range error. NOTE: the array will be created only once and because of closure it will be available for the the new codeToChar function. I guess it's even faster then the first method (it's just a lookup basically).

Answer 2

Will be more portable in case of extending to other alphabets:

char='abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'[code]

or, to be more compatible (with our beloved IE):

char='abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'.charAt(code);

Answer 3

Assuming you want lower case letters:

var chr = String.fromCharCode(97 + n); // where n is 0, 1, 2 ...

97 is the ASCII code for lower case 'a'. If you want uppercase letters, replace 97 with 65 (uppercase 'A'). Note that if n > 25, you will get out of the range of letters.

Answer 4

Javascript's String.fromCharCode(code1, code2, ..., codeN) takes an infinite number of arguments and returns a string of letters whose corresponding ASCII values are code1, code2, ... codeN. Since 97 is 'a' in ASCII, we can adjust for your indexing by adding 97 to your index.

function indexToChar(i) {
  return String.fromCharCode(i+97); //97 in ASCII is 'a', so i=0 returns 'a', 
                                    // i=1 returns 'b', etc
}

Answer 5

Use String.fromCharCode. This returns a string from a Unicode value, which matches the first 128 characters of ASCII.

var a = String.fromCharCode(97);