Question

Morning all,

I have a simple question that I could do with some help with.
I need to create a list of strings that will start with A and finish at some other point e.g BBB, but I am not sure the best and fastest way of doing it.

Thanks in advance.

Ok as requested more information.

I need to create a simple way of creating a list of bays for a warehouse. This wareshouse can have a variable number of Aisles in it, a variable number of rows in each aisle and a variable number of bins for the row. So when the user comes to setup their particular warehouse they can specify the start letter of the Aisle and the end letter of the Aisle.

As you can now see the hardcoded list from A to … isn’t going to work.

Answer 1

No error checking (start number could be greater than end number in which case you would get an infinite loop) but the code works fine.

Hope you at least understand it before submitting it!

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace testList
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.Write((int)'A');
            Console.Write((int)'Z');
            Console.WriteLine("Whats the starting string?");
            string start = Console.ReadLine().ToUpper();
            Console.WriteLine("Whats the end string?");
            string end = Console.ReadLine().ToUpper();

            List<string> retVal = new List<string>();
            retVal.Add(start);

            string currentString = start;
            while (currentString != end)
            {
                currentString = IncrementString(currentString);
                Console.WriteLine(currentString);
                retVal.Add(currentString);
            }
            retVal.Add(end);
            Console.WriteLine("Done");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        private static string IncrementString(string currentString)
        {
            StringBuilder retVal = new StringBuilder(currentString);
            char endChar= currentString[currentString.Length - 1];
            for (int x = (currentString.Length - 1); x >= 0; x--)
            {
                char c = currentString[x];
                if (TryIncrementChar(ref c))
                {
                    retVal[x] = c;
                    break;
                }
                else
                {
                    retVal[x] = 'A';
                    if (x == 0)
                    {
                        retVal.Insert(0,'A');
                    }
                }
            }
            return retVal.ToString();

        }
        private static bool TryIncrementChar(ref char currChar)
        {
            if (currChar != 'Z')
            {
                currChar++;
                return true;
            }
            return false;
        }
    }
}