Iterating through the Alphabet – C# a-caz

First effort, with just a-z then aa-zz

public static IEnumerable<string> GetExcelColumns()
{
    for (char c="a"; c <= 'z'; c++)
    {
        yield return c.ToString();
    }
    char[] chars = new char[2];
    for (char high="a"; high <= 'z'; high++)
    {
        chars[0] = high;
        for (char low = 'a'; low <= 'z'; low++)
        {
            chars[1] = low;
            yield return new string(chars);
        }
    }
}

Note that this will stop at ‘zz’. Of course, there’s some ugly duplication here in terms of the loops. Fortunately, that’s easy to fix – and it can be even more flexible, too:

Second attempt: more flexible alphabet

private const string Alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";

public static IEnumerable<string> GetExcelColumns()
{
    return GetExcelColumns(Alphabet);
}

public static IEnumerable<string> GetExcelColumns(string alphabet)
{
    foreach(char c in alphabet)
    {
        yield return c.ToString();
    }
    char[] chars = new char[2];
    foreach(char high in alphabet)
    {
        chars[0] = high;
        foreach(char low in alphabet)
        {
            chars[1] = low;
            yield return new string(chars);
        }
    }
}

Now if you want to generate just a, b, c, d, aa, ab, ac, ad, ba, … you’d call GetExcelColumns("abcd").

Third attempt (revised further) – infinite sequence

public static IEnumerable<string> GetExcelColumns(string alphabet)
{
    int length = 0;
    char[] chars = null;
    int[] indexes = null;
    while (true)
    {
        int position = length-1;
        // Try to increment the least significant
        // value.
        while (position >= 0)
        {
            indexes[position]++;
            if (indexes[position] == alphabet.Length)
            {
                for (int i=position; i < length; i++)
                {
                    indexes[i] = 0;
                    chars[i] = alphabet[0];
                }
                position--;
            }
            else
            {
                chars[position] = alphabet[indexes[position]];
                break;
            }
        }
        // If we got all the way to the start of the array,
        // we need an extra value
        if (position == -1)
        {
            length++; 
            chars = new char[length];
            indexes = new int[length];
            for (int i=0; i < length; i++)
            {
                chars[i] = alphabet[0];
            }
        }
        yield return new string(chars);
    }
}

It’s possible that it would be cleaner code using recursion, but it wouldn’t be as efficient.

Note that if you want to stop at a certain point, you can just use LINQ:

var query = GetExcelColumns().TakeWhile(x => x != "zzz");

“Restarting” the iterator

To restart the iterator from a given point, you could indeed use SkipWhile as suggested by thesoftwarejedi. That’s fairly inefficient, of course. If you’re able to keep any state between call, you can just keep the iterator (for either solution):

using (IEnumerator<string> iterator = GetExcelColumns())
{
    iterator.MoveNext();
    string firstAttempt = iterator.Current;

    if (someCondition)
    {
        iterator.MoveNext();
        string secondAttempt = iterator.Current;
        // etc
    }
}

Alternatively, you may well be able to structure your code to use a foreach anyway, just breaking out on the first value you can actually use.