From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-03-02T06:43:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Indexing system - ruby newbie


On Mar 1, 2006, at 12:43 PM, Adam Shelly wrote:

>> OP wanted:
>>
>>  ...  24   25   26   27    28    29   ...
>>  ... 'X', 'Y', 'Z', 'AA', 'AB', 'AC' ...
>
> Here's one that uses succ to do the dirty work, but doesn't complicate
> things with inject:
> (note that '@'.succ = 'A')
>
> def letter n
>   l='@'
>   n.times{l.succ!}
>   l.gsub(/@/,'-')
> end
>
> -Adam
>

And now for the over-engineered approach to balance out the golfing <g>:
% cat indexer.rb
class Indexer
   def initialize
     @index_cache = ('A'..'Z').to_a
     @index_cache.unshift('-')
   end

   def alpha_index(i)
     if res = @index_cache[i]
       res
     else
       @index_cache[i] = alpha_index(i - 1).succ
     end
   end
   alias [] alpha_index
end

if $0  == __FILE__
   idx = Indexer.new
   puts idx.alpha_index(27)
   puts idx.alpha_index(0)
   puts idx[26]
end

% ruby indexer.rb
AA
-
Z