From: Gaspard Bucher Date: 2007-09-12T02:30:05+09:00 Subject: Re: undefined method `+' for nil:NilClass (NoMeth Here's a conversion function that does what you want. It was a little tricky to have 'aa' after 'z' instead of 'ba' : def convert(v) res = '' while(v >= 0) res = (?a + (v % 26)).chr + res v = (v/26) - 1 end res end # test puts((0..800).to_a.map{ |v| convert(v) }.join(' '))