How to convert letters to alphabetic rank

[dera]

Hi,

I am looking for a way to convert letters to their alphabetic rank. I know that the RANK function can convert the letter to its ASCII ranking but I am looking for a way to do the reverse function of that.

I have a dataset that looks like this (every number is in a separate variable): 

var1	var2	var3	var4
1	2	3	4
26	25	24	23

...

Here is what I want:

var1	var2	var3	var4
a	b	c	d
z	y	x	w

...

Can anyone help me with that?

Thank you!

[ChrisNZ]

Use the byte() function.

data _null_;
  A= 1; B=byte(96+A); putlog B=;
  A=26; B=byte(96+A); putlog B=;
run;

B=a
B=z

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

You can use the BYTE() function. Capital letters start at 65 and lower case start at 97.

var1char = byte(var1+96);

[SuryaKiran]

You can also use a format.

proc format;
value a2z 	1="a" 2="b" 3="c" 4="d" 5="e"
			6="f" 7="g" 8="h" 9="i" 10="j" 
			11="k" 12="l" 13="m" 14="n" 15="o"
			16="p" 17="q" 18="r" 19="s" 20="t" 
			21="u" 22="v" 23="w" 24="x" 25="y" 26="z";
run;


data have;
format i a2z.;
do i=1 to 26;
output;
end;
run;