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

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#321

Post by justincormack » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

gpvos wrote: post #174

skrebbel wrote: post #168

This works in the Netherlands too, and people commonly use the format for writing the sender address on the back of the envelope. Eg if you live on Braamstraat 11, 5614LK Eindhoven, you can write “5614LK 11” as the return-to-sender address and it’ll work. Post codes here are always \d{4}[A-Z]{2} so it’s obvious to anyone (incl the address scan computers) where the postcode ends and the house number starts. If you mai…

It is in fact guaranteed that house numbers are unique within a Dutch postcode. I'm not sure if that is the case in the UK.

It is the case in the UK (house numbers or names, houses don't have to have numbers)

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#322

Post by sprabbage » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

(note: this may no longer be true - I learned this in the late 90s, and my recollection is slightly fuzzy, so take the details with a pinch of salt).

Royal Mail postcodes that people commonly use may be augmented with a so-called Delivery Point Suffix (DPS), that is an extension of the postcode that identifies a unique delivery address.

The DPS is an alphanumeric code like "1A". As such it is likely shorter than the decimal property number, and does not waste characters on things like "flat 2".

I think a postcode plus DPS should be sufficient to get a letter to a specific address.

High volume bulk mailers can qualify for discounts if they use the DPS, and apply sorting to bag up mail based on destination sorting office and the like.

Sometimes you can see the DPS printed after the postcode on your bills if you get mail from a company that has huge mail volumes.

I learned all this when I re-wrote a god-awful bulk mail sorting program called qamsort (Quick Address Mailsort) for a mobile Telco billing department. Back then Royal Mail used to give away the data needed to do the sorting. Took me a week of lunchtimes, written in Perl, ran in a fraction of the time of qamsort, and didn't cause monthly callouts at 2a.m. because of bullshit license key file expiry.

Never got used in production because people were too change averse and my boss didn't think we could sell it for enough to be worth taking on the risk, which turned out to be the right decision because Royal Mail started charging a pretty penny for access to the sorting data not long thereafter.

I was very excited to learn Perl back then. Fun times.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#323

Post by sseagull » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

fakedang wrote: post #284

kitd wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Duke of Wellington's address, Apsley House, was famously: 1, London Funny story: Back in the 1950s, my father went on a rugby tour to the Soviet Union. One of his team mates wrote a postcard back to his mum with an address of: Mrs Williams, Clynderwen "Clynderwen" being the little village he came from. My dad said, "You can't just put that". He, none too bright, said "Why not? There's only one Clynderwen", and po…

> 6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia". Man, that's some serious organizational ethic! If only both companies and people were as exact today...

There's the story from last year of a letter being delivered that only had a description of the person and where the person used to live:

https://twitter.com/weefeargal/status/1479069076144234497

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#324

Post by samstave » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

kitd wrote: post #273

rax0m wrote: post #88

Olga was a famous doorkeeper at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Students used to send her postcards from their journeys. It became so popular that it was enough to write "Olga, Sweden" for her to get the letters [0] (source in swedish). [0]: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Boberg

The Duke of Wellington's address, Apsley House, was famously: 1, London Funny story: Back in the 1950s, my father went on a rugby tour to the Soviet Union. One of his team mates wrote a postcard back to his mum with an address of: Mrs Williams, Clynderwen "Clynderwen" being the little village he came from. My dad said, "You can't just put that". He, none too bright, said "Why not? There's only one Clynderwen", and po…

This is the most british-ish written post I have ever read, and now my internal dialog is stuck on the british accent setting.

Ill never forget my great aunt amy (my grandmothers sister, they were both canadian by birth in 1923-time)

"Grandma, I didnt know Amy was british!?"

"Neither did we dear, neither did we"

(My great aunt would talk with a British accent)

Family fact - my uncle (Amy's son) went to school with Bill and Paul in Seattle and we have a pic of them together...

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#325

Post by wiredfool » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

donalhunt wrote: post #309

wiredfool wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An Post is one of the intended users of the EirCode system. I'm tempted to try a letter or postcard to the eircode, just to see if it gets delivered. e.g. Name Eircode Ireland also makes it reasonably common that you won't have a number in the address. Someone Foo House Town Co Meath Ireland Is a perfectly reasonable and somewhat common address.

It's actually quite amazing that Ireland survived without postcodes for so long. The following format is probably the most common: Name Townland Co. County Ireland Townlands could have 200+ people. Maybe more in some areas.

Oh definitely, my townland is at least a couple of estates, at 100+ houses each.

And then there are the creatively named estates, where the whole street name is stop words. One near me has "[number] The Avenue", "The Court", "The Close", "The Drive".

Townlands are optional, or it can be the name of a large road near you. I think there are at least 3 addresses corresponding to my house that are used by official government mail, one of the things that EirCodes were supposed to prevent.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#326

Post by gumby » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

messe wrote: post #285

quercusa wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'HM' ?

Would a crown (U+1F451) count as a single character? I wonder if writing down the unicode codepoint would work...

I wonder if printing a photo of the king or PM where the address should go would work.

(obviously a lot more bits than simply writing the address)

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#327

Post by nerdbert » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 10:01 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #80

In the US, someone I know who had a Post Office box liked writing simply `box-number zip-code` as their address. It worked. Eg, if you wrote on an envelope: 1034 21240 It would get there! You might want to add a "Box" before the "1034" to be safe -- and to disambiguate between a house number, as in OP? (I'm not sure just a house number would ever work in the USA?) But it looks cooler with just two numbers. Especially…

At my college dorm I was able to receive mail sent to:

  Room number
  9-digit zip

Like

  219    
  65432-9876

It may have helped that all mail to that 5-digit zip went to the school, and its mail room people might have had more time on their hands than the USPS.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#328

Post by multjoy » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 10:10 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #197

Symbiote wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. Although that's also an address with it's own postcode, so "SW1A 2AA" would also get there.

I'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. I wonder if random mail sent to top level politicians actually gets to them. The intention is clear, yes, but there's probably layers of security that will prevent it from getting to its intended address...

I used to work in the correspondence unit of 10 Downing St. Very few letters made it as far as the PM's desk, but all letters received a response.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#329

Post by ce4 » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 10:10 PM UTC

photojosh wrote: post #304

fakedang wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia". Man, that's some serious organizational ethic! If only both companies and people were as exact today...

Is this not basically once-off nerd-sniping for post workers... "ooh: here's a challenge."? I'm sure you only hear about the success stories.

In my case it was an embarrassing success story... my great uncles name was globally, or at least unique in Germany, i misspelled it, got the postcode wrong, forgot street and house number (sent from abroad)... and it arrived a month or so later. Boy got I laughed at. I'd rather wished it had disappeared. Thats was back in the 90's.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#330

Post by jcranmer » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 10:11 PM UTC

kjs3 wrote: post #292

mytailorisrich wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some very large organisations have also their own postcode. For example, if you want to write to HMRC about your self-assessment the address is: BX9 1AS, and that's it. Edit: moreover, BX is the non-geographic code, whereas 'normal' postcode start with a geographic code, which is usually an abbreviation of the town.

There are a couple of buildings in the US with their own zip code. The White House is one, as is the Empire State building.

The Pentagon manages to have at least 6 zip codes assigned to it (each branch has its own zip code).