Leetcode letter combinations of a phone number

Given a digit string, return all possible letter combinations that the number could represent.

A mapping of digit to letters (just like on the telephone buttons) is given below.

Input:Digit string “23”
Output: [“ad”, “ae”, “af”, “bd”, “be”, “bf”, “cd”, “ce”, “cf”].
Note:

public class Solution {
    HashMap<Character, char[]> map;
    public List<String> letterCombinations(String digits) {
        map=new HashMap<Character, char[]>();
        char a='a';
        for(char c='2';c<='6';c++)
        {
            char [] cs=new char[3];
            for(int i=0;i<3;i++)cs[i]=(char) a++;
            map.put(c, cs);
        }
        map.put('7', new char[]{'p', 'q','r','s'});
        map.put('8', new char[]{'t','u','v'});
        map.put('9', new char[]{'w', 'x', 'y','z'});

        List<String> list=new ArrayList<String>();
        StringBuffer path=new StringBuffer();
        if(digits==null || digits.length()==0)return list;
        helper(0, digits, path, list);
        return list;
    }
    void helper(int index, String digits, StringBuffer path, List<String> list)
    {
        if(index==digits.length())
        {
            list.add(new String(path.toString()));
            return;
        }
        char c=digits.charAt(index);
        char[] cs=map.get(c);
        for(int i=0;i<cs.length;i++)
        {
            path.append(cs[i]);
            helper(index+1, digits, path, list);
            path.deleteCharAt(path.length()-1);
        }
    }
}