get ordinal value for letter PHP
<p>I've been given a datafile where the original creator used alphabetical rather than numeric values to show order.</p>

<p>For example, if there's ten items, they'd be named:</p>

<pre><code>12342313A
12342313B
12342313C
12342313D
12342313E
...
</code></pre>

<p>I need to import these values into a mySQL table that has <code>order</code> as a required <code>int</code> column, and I need to convert the letter to a number. </p>

<p>Is there a function in PHP to get a numeric value for a letter? Or will I need to do a <code>substr</code> to grab the trailing letter, and create an indexed array of letters and just do a lookup against that array?</p>

<p>I'm hesitant to do the simple way above, since I don't know how many objects could potentially exist, and I could need to write an array from A-AAAA or something.</p>
