title: Java numbers with radix > Character.MAX_RADIX
body: <p>I have a five-character String and I want to use those five characters as an ASCII-encoded (printable) number. The simplest way to achieve this is to use</p>
  
  <pre><code>Long.toString(number, Character.MAX_RADIX);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This will give me numbers from <code>"0"</code> to <code>"zzzzz"</code>. Unfortunately <code>Long.toString(int, int)</code> only supports lower-case letters, no upper-case letters. This means that the max radix is <code>36</code> and the highest number I can encode is <code>36^5 - 1 = 60 466 175</code>. If I could use both lower <strong>and</strong> upper-case letters, I'd get a max radix of <code>62</code> and the highest encodable number is <code>62^5 - 1 = 916 132 831</code>.</p>
  
  <p>Apart from copying <code>Long</code>'s source code and extending the possible digits, is there any other place I should look into, first, where this is already implemented?</p>