From: gabriele renzi <rff_rff@...>
Date: 2004-11-06T23:38:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Succ distance between two strings

trans. (T. Onoma) ha scritto:

> Is there an efficient way to calculate the "succ distance" between two strings 
> (without iterating over each succession)? Examples:
> 
>   'a'..'a'    0
>   'a'..'b'    1
>   'a'..'z'    25
>   'a'..'aa'   26
> 
> T.
> 
> 

my tentativ impl would be
class String
  def value
     i=-26
     split(//).inject(0){|x,y|
       i+=26
       x+y[0]-?a+i
     }
  end
end

class Range
  def dist
   max.value - min.value
  end
end
p 'aa'.value - 'a'.value
p 'a'.value - 'a'.value
p  ('a'..'b').dist
p  ('a'..'z').dist

note that '-?a' could be moved in the 'i' initialization but I'm running 
away :)