Enumerate data using letters rather than numbers

labelling.py

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2024 geisserml <[email protected]>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: MPL-2.0

from string import ascii_uppercase as ALPHABET

N_CHARS, ORD_A = len(ALPHABET), ord("A")  # 26, 65

def idx_to_label(i):
    count, remainder = divmod(i, N_CHARS)
    char = ALPHABET[remainder]  # chr(remainder + ORD_A)
    if count > 0:
        return idx_to_label(count-1) + char
    else:
        return char

def label_to_idx(label):
    prefix, char = label[:-1], label[-1]
    i = ord(char) - ORD_A  # ALPHABET.index(char)
    if prefix:
        return (label_to_idx(prefix) + 1) * N_CHARS + i
    else:
        return i

def get_label_maker():
    i = 0
    while True:
        yield idx_to_label(i)
        i += 1

LabelMaker = get_label_maker()
print( [next(LabelMaker) for _ in range(1000)] )

This is basically the procedure used to tag spreadsheet columns, but you may find it useful for other cases as well.