Turning numbers into letters based on alphabetical order

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Brendan
Brendan on 15 Jun 2012
Commented: Christian Lopez Garcia on 25 Jul 2019
Hi all, I am trying to export multiple matrix variable that change in size to an excel file. To get their spacing right I need to give a cell name (eg. 'B3') where I want the variable to be placed. However, I want to be able to space my matrices based on their number of columns, which mean taking a length() command and turning it into a letter. Is there any built in way in matlab to do this. an example of what I'm looking for is below.
function(7)
ans G (because it is the 7th letter in the alphabet)
There may be an easier way of doing this with xlswrite but I dont know it. Thanks
Brendan
  1 Comment
Christian Lopez Garcia
Christian Lopez Garcia on 25 Jul 2019
num=26;
position = alphabet(num)
function position=alphabet(num)
mult=floor(num/26);
diff=num-26*mult;
symbols = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ';
range=26.*[1:26];
if num>26
for i=1:length(range)
if (num >= range(i) && num <= range(i+1))
start=string(symbols(i))
end
end
if diff > 0
extension=string(symbols(diff))
position=char(start+extension+'1')
else diff=0
extension=string(symbols(26))
position=char(start+extension+'1')
end
else
position=string(symbols(num));
position=char(position + '1');
end
end

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Accepted Answer

Titus Edelhofer
Titus Edelhofer on 15 Jun 2012
Hi Brendan,
something like this:
n = 7;
char('A'+(n-1))
What I forgot: you might also think about taking
n1 = rem(n, 26);
n2 = floor(n/26);
in order to have e.g. "AE" for n=31 ...
Titus
  4 Comments
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Guillaume
Guillaume on 15 Apr 2015
Julian, your answer is probably the most comprehensive so you may consider reposting it as an actual answer rather than a comment, so you can at least get some votes for it, even if it can't be the accepted answer anyway.
That is, if you want some reputation points.
Titus Edelhofer
Titus Edelhofer on 15 Apr 2015
Or you might submit this to the File Exchange, if nothing similar is there already ...

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More Answers (1)

the cyclist
the cyclist on 15 Jun 2012
There's not an explicit builtin for this, but it is easy to write:
function c = letterRankToLetter(n)
c = char('A'+n-1);
end
This will only work for n in the range 1-26, so you might want to put some error-checking in there.

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