Talk:List of postal codes

Untitled

hg

Merge?

I can implement the merge from Lists of postal codes to this page (which can be renamed as per discussion below). Support, objections or observations anyone?? Dl2000 23:45, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Another reason to merge off is that Category:Lists of postal codes can automagically generate the basic "list of lists". The remaining postal code "formats" page can take care of annotations. Dl2000 13:00, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. This is a list of lists, therefore it would be correct to state that we have lists of postal codes. Jussenadv 08:32, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Move/Rename?

Might this be moved to List of postal code formats or similar? At the moment it's too similar to Lists of postal codes. sjorford 10:25, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Concur with move to List of postal code formats. Comments, or shows of support/objection? Dl2000 23:45, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Or list of postal code notation schemes. 112.118.149.119 (talk) 15:36, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Ireland

I'm reverting to 'none used'. The Post Office (An Post) uses OCR and says that post codes would be "costly and unnecessary". Business want them as it would help direct marketing. So the government said "yes - in 2008". The opposion parties are skeptial. If and when its definite - when the Post Office says so, we can revise Wiki. Until then 'none used' is accurate and safer --ClemMcGann 14:15, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

As the Eircode combinations "ANW AANN" and "ANW ANAA" only occur for routing key D6W (here on the Irish Government Network Citizens Information site), the generalisation "ANW" is unnecessary, and it's safe to change the entry in the table to:

"D6W AANN, D6W ANAA. Note: 'D6W'=the characters D6W"

--Cjjm (talk) 14:34, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi! The current Ireland entry states: "The codes are only used in full 7 character format". I'm not sure this is entirely true. Take Dublin for example. There, some still use what are now known as routing keys on their own. This is because these are just the old postal districts they have always lived in. For example, the theoretical address 35 X Street, Terenure, Dublin D6W or 35 X Street, Terenure, Dublin 6W might be used by a Terenure resident. This is because they aren't mandatory. In the same light, because the codes aren't mandatory, a letter addressed to 35 X Street, Swords, Dublin K67, would undoubtedly reach the intended recipient, and there would be no "return to sender" consequence because of a technically incomplete code. This all means that the codes aren't only used in full 7 character format. 188.141.95.208 (talk) 01:21, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Taiwan twice

Taiwan listed twice. Drop the first. Use the latter. Better country name and more accurate contents.

Fixed Dl2000 01:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Notation

Mention why you use A, and then use 9. OK, 1 looks like I, but still say why. Or why not Z99ZZ9...

A couple more options to throw in there for consideration:

• A (for alpha) / N (for number) (Canadian postal code promotional material has used "ANA NAN")
• A (for alpha) / # (for number) US: #####(-####) Canada: A#A #A#

Should also consider parenthesis to show optional characters Dl2000 01:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Better yet, use a special symbol for alpha as well, to avoid confusion in those cases where the letter A is itself used. A boxed A and N would work well. 63.95.64.254 (talk) 22:46, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. How about @ or $ for letters? Sample (first ten entries, guessing which As are any letter and which are literally A):

• Afghanistan : No postal code used.
• Åland: (AX-)##### Note: Country code: AX even though part of the Finnish postal code system.
• Albania: (AL-)####. Introduced in 2006, gradually implemented throughout 2007.
• Algeria: #####
• American Samoa: #####* or #####-####*. US territory - part of the US zip-code system.
• Andorra: AD### each parish now has its own post code. See Postal services in Andorra.
• Angola: No postal code used.
• Anguilla: AI-2640. Single code used for all addresses.
• Antigua and Barbuda: No postal code used.
• Argentina: @####@@@. The first letter (@) indicates the province, the four numbers (####) are the old postal codes, the three last letters (@@@) indicate a side of the block. Previously #### which remains the minimum requirement as of 2006. See also Argentine postal code.

WP:MOS uses italics for other types of place-holder such as names of arguments to subroutines, but that may be too subtle a distinction to see easily when mixed in a single word with literal characters such as AD999. Certes (talk) 23:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Greece

The bit on 4-digit codes is dubious:A Thessaloniki stamp dealer who advertises in Scott Stamp Monthly has a 5-digit postcode, and the UPU file on Greek addressing only mentions 5-digit codes.Ranma9617 20:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

need consistent format and/or explanation

It is unclear in some cases what the format is, because of the uses of parentheses, brackets, and [apparently] interspersed comments. The formats need to be expressed in a consistent way, with an expanded key above (and below?) so that all characters in use are explained.

I would also appreciate if a regex were provided for each country's postal code format.

Regex is a very niche way of specifying string formats. It's only used in computing, not in the postal system, and certainly not in the scope of this article. At least not until every man, woman, granny, and grandad knows what to make of a regular expression upon seeing it, it will not be general knowledge, and the article shouldn't assume that it would make it any easier to understand. Wikipedia is for humans, not just computer scientists, and definitely not computers. --BurritoBazooka (talk) 22:08, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Where to draw line on making article useful to bot-s

A human readable article on postal code formats, and machine readable list for use in computer validation, are both needed. And for computer use, at least, integration with ISO 3166-1 would be useful. Is it sensible to make this article more machine readable, without changing the appearance to humans? I am willing to make a modest effort towards this end. Upside: concentrating efforts on one central list will mean a more accurate list. Downside: this compromises a little the purpose of wikipedia. What do wikipdia regulars think?

(Natefin (talk) 15:55, 25 September 2009 (UTC))

Hmm. I don't think something like microdata is necessarily a good idea, since it will complicate markup. Wikipedia really is written for humans, not computers. Certainly this page is really useful for humans to look at when they are creating or updating postal code parsers, but that's a bit of a different thing. There are lots of wrinkles, like how to handle punctuation which is customary but optional, older formats, dependencies, etc. Different parsers may choose to resolve these questions differently.

That being said, the list could probably be improved for both humans and algorithm-writers by separating the main information (current format, without punctuation) and standardizing the notation is a more easily understood way. (Maybe italics for characters to look up in the legend, and non-italics for literal characters?) Then it would be easy to mechanically transform that column into an algorithm, with manual tweaks based on notes or other columns. Having a separate column for "customarily written like" would help encourage filling in a lot of missing data. An example in an actual address for each country might also be helpful. -- Beland (talk) 04:34, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

FYI, the Common Locale Data Repository is actually making a machine-readable database of information like this. -- Beland (talk) 18:38, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Bahrain

"Bahrain: 999 or 9999. Valid postcodes are 199 to 1299, corresponding with the 12 administrative subdivisions of the kingdom."

If the 12 subdivision correspond are numbered, then wouldn't it be 100 to 1299? This use of "9" to indicate any number, if that's the intention, would seem to be a flaw here. 63.95.64.254 (talk) 22:44, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Hong Kong

Someone added this source [1] to suggest that Hong Kong's postal code is 999077. I challenged the reliability of this source and removed the content. The Hong Kong Post Office link clearly states that postal codes are not used in Hong Kong; I judged the cited source to be unreliable because of its incorrect rendering of the names of Hong Kong's districts into English, among other inaccuracies. --Deryck C. 21:46, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Spain

The current postal code in Spain, NNNNN, was introduced in middle 1983. In 1976 were introduced postal districts in large cities like Madrid, Barcelona, and maybe few else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.231.95.130 (talk)

Kuwait

Says "no codes", but they seem to have them now; — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rlpmjp2 (talk • contribs) 21:55, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Saudi Arabia

I added some notes re Saudi Arabia's postal code system and two links. However I don't know how to make the links show up properly in the reference list. (They are showing in the note as [3] and [4], but [3] and [4] are other refs, and the new links don't appear in refs part of page). Note: The second link (http://youbianku.com/files/upu/SAU.pdf) that I added has the undesirable property of coming up with a Print box that the user has to cancel before viewing the page. I don't know of a fix. Jwpat7 (talk) 21:21, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

British Antarctic Territory

Currently listed as not having a country code. Looking at ISO 3166 (http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes.htm), it should be listed as being under AQ for Antartica they note no sub divisions are reported. Updating as appropriate. LexMitchell (talk) 11:21, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

References

Position of postal code

It would be nice to extend this table to include a postal code order hint, eg L,R,A,B Postal code position : before or after, or below or above the city. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.32.96.40 (talk) 13:24, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

External links - addition request

Some long-standing links have been removed due, apparently, to a perceived conflict of interest. Please note that I receive absolutely nothing through visits to the pages concerned. There is no pay per click advertising and the fixed advertising simply helps to offset the hosting costs. The links are for resources considered authoritative and have been published (in book form and now online) since 1994, and are the result of 22 years of continuous research. I add them to provide a quality resource to Wikipedia users. Please consider restoring: http://www.grcdi.nl/gsb/world%20postal%20code%20formats.html Complete list of the world's postal code formats and their specifics. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grahamrhind (talk • contribs) 15:50, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

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Namibia postal codes

Namibia has implemented postal codes in 2019. A PDF was released on 9 Jan 2019. Refer to different Wiki https://www.nampost.com.na/uploads/documents/cd93d1d6a58287b5b1e5739815c6c628baa1e657.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.182.112.191 (talk) 09:45, 30 March 2019 (UTC)