javascript - What is a method that can be used to increment letters? - Stack Overflow

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Does anyone know of a Javascript library (e.g. underscore, jQuery, MooTools, etc.) that offers a method of incrementing a letter?

I would like to be able to do something like:

"a"++; // would return "b"

Does anyone know of a Javascript library (e.g. underscore, jQuery, MooTools, etc.) that offers a method of incrementing a letter?

I would like to be able to do something like:

"a"++; // would return "b"

• javascript
• increment
• alphabetical

Share Improve this question Follow edited Sep 19, 2012 at 23:10 Miguel 1,96422 gold badges1818 silver badges3333 bronze badges asked Sep 19, 2012 at 22:57 andyzinsserandyzinsser 2,53322 gold badges1818 silver badges1818 bronze badges 2

• I'm not sure the syntax you're looking for is possible, but the operation is possible through methods. – anson Commented Sep 19, 2012 at 22:59
• What is the application? – valentinas Commented Sep 19, 2012 at 23:15

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16 Answers 16

Sorted by: Reset to default 239

Simple, direct solution

function nextChar(c) {
    return String.fromCharCode(c.charCodeAt(0) + 1);
}
nextChar('a');

As others have noted, the drawback is it may not handle cases like the letter 'z' as expected. But it depends on what you want out of it. The solution above will return '{' for the character after 'z', and this is the character after 'z' in ASCII, so it could be the result you're looking for depending on what your use case is.

---

Unique string generator

(Updated 2019/05/09)

Since this answer has received so much visibility I've decided to expand it a bit beyond the scope of the original question to potentially help people who are stumbling on this from Google.

I find that what I often want is something that will generate sequential, unique strings in a certain character set (such as only using letters), so I've updated this answer to include a class that will do that here:

class StringIdGenerator {
  constructor(chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ') {
    this._chars = chars;
    this._nextId = [0];
  }

  next() {
    const r = [];
    for (const char of this._nextId) {
      r.unshift(this._chars[char]);
    }
    this._increment();
    return r.join('');
  }

  _increment() {
    for (let i = 0; i < this._nextId.length; i++) {
      const val = ++this._nextId[i];
      if (val >= this._chars.length) {
        this._nextId[i] = 0;
      } else {
        return;
      }
    }
    this._nextId.push(0);
  }

  *[Symbol.iterator]() {
    while (true) {
      yield this.next();
    }
  }
}

Usage:

const ids = new StringIdGenerator();

ids.next(); // 'a'
ids.next(); // 'b'
ids.next(); // 'c'

// ...
ids.next(); // 'z'
ids.next(); // 'A'
ids.next(); // 'B'

// ...
ids.next(); // 'Z'
ids.next(); // 'aa'
ids.next(); // 'ab'
ids.next(); // 'ac'

Plain javascript should do the trick:

String.fromCharCode('A'.charCodeAt() + 1) // Returns B

What if the given letter is z? Here is a better solution. It goes A,B,C... X,Y,Z,AA,AB,... etc. Basically it increments letters like the column ID's of an Excel spreadsheet.

nextChar('yz'); // returns "ZA"

    function nextChar(c) {
        var u = c.toUpperCase();
        if (same(u,'Z')){
            var txt = '';
            var i = u.length;
            while (i--) {
                txt += 'A';
            }
            return (txt+'A');
        } else {
            var p = "";
            var q = "";
            if(u.length > 1){
                p = u.substring(0, u.length - 1);
                q = String.fromCharCode(p.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0));
            }
            var l = u.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0);
            var z = nextLetter(l);
            if(z==='A'){
                return p.slice(0,-1) + nextLetter(q.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0)) + z;
            } else {
                return p + z;
            }
        }
    }
    
    function nextLetter(l){
        if(l<90){
            return String.fromCharCode(l + 1);
        }
        else{
            return 'A';
        }
    }
    
    function same(str,char){
        var i = str.length;
        while (i--) {
            if (str[i]!==char){
                return false;
            }
        }
        return true;
    }

// below is simply for the html sample interface and is unrelated to the javascript solution

var btn = document.getElementById('btn');
var entry = document.getElementById('entry');
var node = document.createElement("div");
node.id = "node";

btn.addEventListener("click", function(){
  node.innerHTML = '';
  var textnode = document.createTextNode(nextChar(entry.value));
  node.appendChild(textnode);
  document.body.appendChild(node);
});

<input id="entry" type="text"></input>
<button id="btn">enter</button>

One possible way could be as defined below

function incrementString(value) {
  let carry = 1;
  let res = '';

  for (let i = value.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
    let char = value.toUpperCase().charCodeAt(i);

    char += carry;

    if (char > 90) {
      char = 65;
      carry = 1;
    } else {
      carry = 0;
    }

    res = String.fromCharCode(char) + res;

    if (!carry) {
      res = value.substring(0, i) + res;
      break;
    }
  }

  if (carry) {
    res = 'A' + res;
  }

  return res;
}

console.info(incrementString('AAA')); // will print AAB
console.info(incrementString('AZA')); // will print AZB
console.info(incrementString('AZ')); // will print BA
console.info(incrementString('AZZ')); // will print BAA
console.info(incrementString('ABZZ')); // will print ACAA
console.info(incrementString('BA')); // will print BB
console.info(incrementString('BAB')); // will print BAC

// ... and so on ...

You can try this

console.log( 'a'.charCodeAt​(0))​

First convert it to Ascii number .. Increment it .. then convert from Ascii to char..

var nex = 'a'.charCodeAt(0);
console.log(nex)
$('#btn1').on('click', function() {
   var curr = String.fromCharCode(nex++)
   console.log(curr)
});

​Check FIDDLE

Adding upon all these answers:

// first code on page
String.prototype.nextChar = function(i) {
    var n = i | 1;
    return String.fromCharCode(this.charCodeAt(0) + n);
}

String.prototype.prevChar = function(i) {
    var n = i | 1;
    return String.fromCharCode(this.charCodeAt(0) - n);
}

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/pitaj/3F5Qt/

I needed to use sequences of letters multiple times and so I made this function based on this SO question. I hope this can help others.

function charLoop(from, to, callback)
{
    var i = from.charCodeAt(0);
    var to = to.charCodeAt(0);
    for(;i<=to;i++) callback(String.fromCharCode(i));
}

• from - start letter
• to - last letter
• callback(letter) - function to execute for each letter in the sequence

How to use it:

charLoop("A", "K", function(char) {
    //char is one letter of the sequence
});

See this working demo

This one does work well:

var nextLetter = letter => {
    let charCode = letter.charCodeAt(0);
    let isCapital = letter == letter.toUpperCase();

    if (isCapital == true) {
        return String.fromCharCode((charCode - 64) % 26 + 65)
    } else {
        return String.fromCharCode((charCode - 96) % 26 + 97)
    }
}

EXAMPLES

nextLetter("a"); // returns 'b'
nextLetter("z"); // returns 'a'
nextLetter("A"); // returns 'B'
nextLetter("Z"); // returns 'A'

This is my function to get increment letters to infinity in Javascript( for uppercase only)

function getNextStringId(str) {
    let index = str.length-1;
    let baseCode= str.charCodeAt(index);
    do{
        baseCode= str.charCodeAt(index);
        let strArr= str.split("");
        if(strArr[index] == "Z"){
            strArr[index] = "A";
            if(index==0){
                strArr.unshift("A");
            }
        }
        else{
            strArr[index]= String.fromCharCode(baseCode + 1);
        }
        str= strArr.join("");
        index--;
    } while(baseCode == 90)
    return str;
}


getNextStringId("A") // B
getNextStringId("Z") // AA
getNextStringId("ABZZ") // ACAA

This is really old. But I needed this functionality and none of the solutions are optimal for my use case. I wanted to generate a, b, c...z, aa,ab...zz, aaa... . This simple recursion does the job.

function nextChar(str) {
if (str.length == 0) {
    return 'a';
}
var charA = str.split('');
if (charA[charA.length - 1] === 'z') {
    return nextID(str.substring(0, charA.length - 1)) + 'a';
} else {
    return str.substring(0, charA.length - 1) +
        String.fromCharCode(charA[charA.length - 1].charCodeAt(0) + 1);
}
};

A just for laughs solution

function nextLetter(str) {
  const Alphabet = [
    // lower case alphabet
    "a", "b", "c",
    "d", "e", "f",
    "g", "h", "i",
    "j", "k", "l",
    "m", "n", "o",
    "p", "q", "r",
    "s", "t", "u",
    "v", "w", "x",
    "y", "z",
    // upper case alphabet
    "A", "B", "C",
    "D", "E", "F",
    "G", "H", "I",
    "J", "K", "L",
    "M", "N", "O",
    "P", "Q", "R",
    "S", "T", "U",
    "V", "W", "X",
    "Y", "Z"
  ];

  const LetterArray = str.split("").map(letter => {
    if (Alphabet.includes(letter) === true) {
      return Alphabet[Alphabet.indexOf(letter) + 1];
    } else {
      return " ";
    }
  });

  const Assemble = () => LetterArray.join("").trim();
  return Assemble();
}


console.log(nextLetter("hello*3"));

Here is a variation of the rot13 algorithm I submitted on https://stackoverflow.com/a/28490254/881441:

function rot1(s) {
  return s.replace(/[A-Z]/gi, c =>
    "BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZAbcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyza"[
    "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".indexOf(c) ] )
}

The input code in the bottom and the looked up codec is on the top (i.e. the output code is the same as the input code but shifted by 1). The function only changes letters, i.e. if any other character is passed in, it will be unchanged by this codec.

Zar and Nathan's answers both good stuff. Everything else here seems overcomplicated for me.

• I wanted to specify my own character set so didn't bother with charCode
• I didn't need multi character recursion
• added 0 to my character set for error handling (while (letter != 0))

I ended up with this:

let letter = "a";
let alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0";
let nextletter = alphabet.substr(alphabet.indexOf(letter)+1,1);

Then I can very simply add in further dimensions:

let alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!£$%^&*_0";

function increment(e) {
let letter = e.value;
let alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0";
let next = alphabet.substr(alphabet.indexOf(letter)+1,1);
document.getElementById("result").innerHTML = next;
};

<input type="text" minlength="1" maxlength="1" onchange="increment(this)" placeholder="type letter">
<button>Update</button>
<div id="result"></div>

Make a function with {a: 'b', b: 'c', etc} in a closure:-

let nextChar = (s => (
    "abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyza".split('')
    .reduce((a,b)=> (s[a]=b, b)), // make the lookup
c=> s[c] // the function returned
))({}); // parameter s, starts empty

usage:-

nextChar('a')

Adding uppercase and digits:-

let nextCh = (
    (alphabeta, s) => (
        [alphabeta, alphabeta.toUpperCase(), "01234567890"]
            .forEach(chars => chars.split('')
               .reduce((a,b) => (s[a]=b, b))), 
        c=> s[c] 
    )
)("abcdefghijklmopqrstuvwxyza", {});

p.s. In some versions of Javascript, you can use [...chars] instead of chars.split('')

function charLoop(from, to, callback) {
    var i = from.charCodeAt(0);
    var to = to.charCodeAt(0);
    for (; i <= to; i++) {
        callback(String.fromCharCode(i));
    }
}

var sequence = "";
charLoop("A", "Z", function (char) {
    sequence += char + " ";
});

sequence = sequence.trim();
sequence = sequence.split(" ");

var resseq = sequence;
var res = "";
var prevlet = "";
var nextlet = "";

for (b = 0; b < resseq.length; b++) {
    if (prevlet != "") {
        prevlet = resseq[b];
    }

    for (a = 0; a < sequence.length; a++) {
        for (j = 1; j < 100; j++) {
            if (prevlet == "") {
                prevlet = sequence[a];
                nextlet = sequence[a + 1];
                res += sequence[a] + sequence[a] + 0 + j + " ";
            }
            else {

                if (j < 10) {
                    res += prevlet + sequence[a] + 0 + j + " ";
                }
                else {
                    res += prevlet + sequence[a] + j + " ";
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

document.body.innerHTML = res;

Based on @Nathan wall answer increment and decrement

// Albhabet auto increment and decrement
class StringIdGenerator {
    constructor(chars = '') {
      this._chars = chars;
    }

  next() {
    var u = this._chars.toUpperCase();
    if (this._same(u,'Z')){
        var txt = '';
        var i = u.length;
        while (i--) {
            txt += 'A';
        }
        this._chars = txt+'A';
        return (txt+'A');
    } else {
      var p = "";
      var q = "";
      if(u.length > 1){
          p = u.substring(0, u.length - 1);
          q = String.fromCharCode(p.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0));
      }
      var l = u.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0);
      var z = this._nextLetter(l);
      if(z==='A'){
        this._chars = p.slice(0,-1) + this._nextLetter(q.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0)) + z;
          return p.slice(0,-1) + this._nextLetter(q.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0)) + z;
      } else {
        this._chars = p+z;
          return p + z;
      }
    }
  }

  prev() {
    var u = this._chars.toUpperCase();
    console.log("u "+u)
    var l = u.slice(-1).charCodeAt(0);
    var z = this._nextLetter(l);
    var rl = u.slice(1)
    var y = (rl == "A") ? "Z" :this._prevLetter(rl.charCodeAt(0))
      var txt = '';
      var i = u.length;
      var j = this._chars
      var change = false
      while (i--) {
        if(change){
          if (u[u.length-1] == "A"){
            txt += this._prevLetter(u[i].charCodeAt(0))
          }else{
            txt += u[i]
          }
          
        }else{
          if (u[u.length-1] == "A"){
            txt += this._prevLetter(u[i].charCodeAt(0))
            change = true
          }else{
            change = true
            txt += this._prevLetter(u[i].charCodeAt(0))
          }
        }
      }
      if(u == "A" && txt == "Z"){
        this._chars = ''
      }else{
        this._chars = this._reverseString(txt);
      }
      console.log(this._chars)
      return (j);
  }
  _reverseString(str) {
      return str.split("").reverse().join("");
  }
  _nextLetter(l){
      if(l<90){
          return String.fromCharCode(l + 1);
      }
      else{
          return 'A';
      }
  }

  _prevLetter(l){
    if(l<=90){
      if(l == 65) l = 91
        return String.fromCharCode(l-1);
    }
    else{
        return 'A';
    }
  }
  _same(str,char){
      var i = str.length;
      while (i--) {
          if (str[i]!==char){
              return false;
          }
      }
      return true;
  }
    
}

Usage

const ids = new StringIdGenerator();

ids.next(); 
ids.prev();

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