Converting alphabet letter to alphabet position in PHP

Question

$my_alphabet = "T";

The above character "T" should print the exact position/number of the alphabet. ie 20

So, if

$my_alphabet = "A" ;

• I should be able to get the position of the alphabet. ie 1

How can I achieve that.

I see converting number to alphabet .. but the reverse is not there anywhere.

Thanks, Kimz

Answer 1

By using the ascii value:

ord(strtoupper($letterOfAlphabet)) - ord('A') + 1

in ASCII the letters are sorted by alphabetic order, so...

Answer 2

In case the alphabet letter is not upper case, you can add this line of code to make sure you get the right position of the letter

$my_alphabet = strtoupper($my_alphabet);

so if you get either 'T' or 't' , it will always return the right position.

Otherwise @bwoebi 's answers will perfectly do the job

Answer 3

you should be careful about (uppercase, lowercase):

<?php
$upperArr = range('A', 'Z') ;
$LowerArr = range('a', 'z') ;
$myLetter = 't';

if(ctype_upper($myLetter)){
    echo (array_search($myLetter, $upperArr) + 1); 
}else{
    echo (array_search($myLetter, $LowerArr) + 1); 
}
?>