# Most suitable language for performing Excel operations

In which language where you increment a character (well .... it has to be uppercase in this case) by 1 and you get the next character in ASCII (also alphabetic) sequence ?

I don't know if this is supported in any other language but this is doable in PHP (even in older versions).

```
$column = 'B';
echo ++$column; 
```

will output **C**

But these won't work :

- `$column = $column + 1;` - will throw string to integer operation error - **TypeError: 'str' object cannot be interpreted as an integer**
- Decrement operators : `$column--` will not give you the previous charcater in sequence. Will not throw any errors though. Will retain value as 'B'
- Lowercase won't work either `$column = 'b';`

This is what I did in a real use-case : (I got the XLSX sheet's data map to a PHP array using another script)


![xlsx.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1652423804008/BKj-qwpny.png align="left")

```
<?php
$data = [
    'B' => [5=>105,15,205,22,35,332],
    'D' => [5=>95,95,99,32,442,95],
    'E' => [5=>62,89,51,55,32,95],
    'F' => [5=>66,78,44,9,329,55],
    'G' => [5=>55,100,80,63,951,32],
    'H' => [5=>10,55,591,32,200,80]    
];
?>
<table border="1">
<?php
for ($i = 5; $i <= 10; $i++)
{
    echo "<tr>";

    for ($j = 'B'; $j !== 'I'; $j++)
    {
        # echo $j;

        if ($j == 'C') continue;

        echo "<td>";        
        
        if (!isset($data[$j][$i])) continue;
        $value = $data[$j][$i];
        
        echo $value;
        
        echo "</td>";
    }

    echo "</tr>";
}
?>
</table>
```
![xlsx-table.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1652423875319/Z9Ztt0akg.png align="left")

Isn't this just so cool ?