What is the minimal possible UK address? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#11

Post by rtpg » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:51 PM UTC

Definitely not unique to Japan, but several towers here have their own zip code, and there is at least one building I know where the building has several zip codes (each for various floors of the building).

People take this and extrapolate to think that we should just be writing very long zip codes for everything, but the wonderful nature of writing out addresses is that they have a lot of possible error correcting. The one thing that is still pretty haphazard is the street number, let's get some ECC checks in there!

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#12

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:51 PM UTC

bloak wrote: post #3

He should have written 20 SE1 6AD GB and posted it in a different country.

It would be one char more minimal if he moves from "SE1" to e.g. the "N1" area.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#13

Post by nathell » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

uberman wrote: post #4

semi related - Address as a hand drawn maps: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-31/with-no-a... https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/postman-manages-del...

Also, Russian post successfully deciphering and delivering a mojibaked address: https://twitter.com/notrevenant/status/993170640625598470

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#14

Post by ryanmcdonough » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

Well it's all going to a central place in the flats, so without a specification on which flat how do we know which flat the letter belongs to - works well with a house you own but the minimalism could mean your post being inadvertently taken.

However it's a good show of how much ink/time is wasted normally on letters with useless data.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#15

Post by wjdp » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #2

I think he implied it but there are postal codes that refer to a single Mail Drop location. For example, sometimes your tax return will have its own zip code in the USA.

At my university there were postcodes per large building

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#16

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#17

Post by tetris11 » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:53 PM UTC

At risk of sounding like a sourpuss, I can't help but think that this is something that most people who live in the UK work out simply by using web forms which autocomplete your address based on simply postcode and number.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#18

Post by djm_ » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:53 PM UTC

I remember working with SagePay as a payment provider back in 2008 (before we knew of Stripe!) and finding it interesting that card address validation was only done on the numbers in a full address.

For example, from "20 Windsor Road, London, SE1 6JH" it would extract 2016 and validate that against the banks details.

I thought that was quite a smart way as UK addresses can come in all forms, shapes and sizes (as the post shows) – but the minimal bits required to be correct are indeed the numbers as all postcodes have them and an incorrect number would mean a incorrect postcode.

Edit: the funny bit was that they made you work this out and send it along with the request rather than just handling it internally :)

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#19

Post by dmd » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:53 PM UTC

In the US, PO Boxes often have their own ZIP code. I used to be able to be reached from anywhere in the world by:

01004-0072 US

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#20

Post by jmclnx » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 1:53 PM UTC

Interesting, I tried something similar here in the US by using an address like this:

1 my street

01234-5678

But the letter was returned to me as "Address Unknown". It needed the City and State to be delivered. Nice to see in the UK the postal codes are more useful then here in the US.