How to Convert Letters to Numbers in Python

John on April 01, 2021

To convert letters to their corresponding number in the alphabet, use the python ord() function and subtract 96 from the output.

To demonstrate this, let's loop through a string of letters and create a new array containing numbers.

letters = "zjkswa"

numbers = []

for l in letters:
   numbers.append(ord(l) - 96)

print(numbers)

[26, 10, 11, 19, 23, 1]

With list Comprehension

The same conversion as above can be done in one line using list comprehension.

letters = "zjkswa"

numbers = [ord(l) - 96 for l in letters]

print(numbers)

[26, 10, 11, 19, 23, 1]