On Fri, 2008-01-18 at 10:59 +1300, Tony Bowden wrote: > Martin Ebourne wrote: > > Not so unusual really, in the UK postcodes are of the form B27 6EG where > > the first part is one or two letters for the local city, and a number > > for district (numbered in alphabetical order, except for 1 which is > > always the centre of town). The second part is always 1 digit and 2 > > letters to denote the street or building. > > Not so quick with such misplaced definitiveness!
Apologies if I sounded definitive, certainly wasn't planning to. I was going more for the common case as an example. As others have pointed out the UK postcode system is far to complex to attempt a full definition. > Although this is generally true, you've left out a couple of important > variations: > > * Many London postcodes are of the form AA0A 0AA. > * There is at least one special case of the form AAA AA0 > > Also, the first letter(s) aren't always for the local city. All of > Northern Ireland, for example, is 'BT'. Yes, I live in E15 (E for London of course) and have worked plenty around EC1A so am aware of most of these. Don't forget the BFPO postcodes as well. Sites really shouldn't try to validate this stuff. The most annoying one of course is the very common mandatory county (as already mentioned on this thread). At least 7 million people live in London so over 10% of the population has no county, not to mention other cities in this situation. How can these people not realise this? Cheers, Martin.
