java: converting capital chars to ints

Question

I am working on a USACO problem (ride) and I am trying to convert a capital char (i.e.'A') to it's respective int (for 'A' it would be 1) and It does not seem to be working. What I am currently doing is:

for(char c1 : st1ch)
{
    int charint = (int)c1;
    totalcharsum1 = totalcharsum1*charint;
}

..in order to convert a read string from a file (which I converted to an array of chars) to their int counterparts. I assumed and read that (int)"A" etc. would be 1. However, my code does not produce the right result apparently. I believe this is the problem as I can see no other problems. I have found no guide to this problem. Of course my mistake may be elsewhere so Ill post my code below anyway:

import java.io.*;

class ride {

    public static void main(String[] arg) throws IOException{

        BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader ("ride.in"));
        String st1 = reader.readLine();
        String st2 = reader.readLine();
        int totalcharsum1 = 1;
        int totalcharsum2 = 1;
        char[] st1ch = st1.toCharArray();
        char[] st2ch = st2.toCharArray();

        for(char c1 : st1ch)
        {
            int charint = (int)c1;
            totalcharsum1 = totalcharsum1*charint;
        }
        for(char c2 : st2ch)
        {
            int charint = (int)c2;
            totalcharsum2 = totalcharsum2*charint;
        }
        PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("ride.out")));
        if(totalcharsum1%47 == totalcharsum2%47)
        {
            out.println("GO");
        }else{
            out.println("STAY");
        }
        out.close();
        System.exit(0);
    }
  }

My questions is how do you convert a capital char to its respective int on the alphabet? Thanks, Sam.

Answer 1

You can convert an char to an int in Java by subtracting their absolute ASCII values. Below is a method that returns the product of the integer values of each character in a String (useful for ride.java):

public static int makeNumber(String name) {
        int product = 1;
        //iterate through each character in the String name
        for (int i = 0; i < name.length(); i++) {
            //get the character value
            int charVal = (name.charAt(i) - 'A') + 1; 
            //multiply the product by the character value
            product *= charVal;
        }
        return product;
    }
}

Answer 2

Subtract their ASCII values.

char ch = 'X';
int diff = ch -'A';