Philip Newton wrote:
On Jan 17, 2008 6:38 PM, Michael G Schwern <schw...@pobox.com> wrote:
I think it's already been said, or maybe it went by on Twitter, but there's a
special layer of hell for DBAs who store phone "numbers", social security
"numbers" and PIN "numbers" as numbers.
Ditto with postal codes -- especially because sometimes that "works"
and only sometimes does it fall down badly, especially in areas which
allow postal codes that start with 0. (That should be a clue that it's
not a number, even if it's composed only of digits.)
Or, ya know, Canadians. Damn Canadians with their alphanumeric postal codes!!
Here's a "do you mind if I tell you how we [uhh, they] do it in Canada"
moment...
Canadian Postal Codes are decidedly non-hateful. They avoided the issue of
confusing 0 and O, and 1 and I by alternating alphas and numerics. It's
always A0A 0A0. Furthermore, they disallow D, I, O, F and Q to make OCR
easier and further reduce human confusion. I guess F looks like the 7 with a
line through it? This gives them something like 7.2 million codes.
And, of course, Santa gets to live in H0H 0H0.
--
I am somewhat preoccupied telling the laws of physics to shut up and sit down.
-- Vaarsuvius, "Order of the Stick"
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0107.html
