The number input is the worst input

Re:The number input is the worst input by staringback on Thursday September 15, 2022 @04:38PM (#32858133)

Did you even read the wikipedia page I linked?

    If the number already contains the check digit, drop that digit to form the "payload." The check digit is most often the last digit.
    With the payload, start from the rightmost digit. Moving left, double the value of every second digit (including the rightmost digit).
    Sum the digits of the resulting value in each position (using the original value where a digit did not get doubled in the previous step).
    The check digit is calculated by 10 − ( s mod ⁡ 10 ) {\displaystyle 10-(s\operatorname {mod} 10)} {\displaystyle 10-(s\operatorname {mod} 10)}.

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Re:The number input is the worst input by colejohnson66 on Thursday September 15, 2022 @04:53PM (#32858303)

I think what GP is saying is: Just because it is a number (that has a checksum built on it being a number), does not mean most programmers should treat it as one; Treat it as an opaque string. If you need to validate it, use a character by character (not digit by digit) Luhn algorithm; Work on ASCII digits, not numbers.

The issue is that many beginner (and some experienced) programmers treat what should be opaque strings as numbers and throw them into a 32/64-bit integer, or worse, a double precision float (in JavaScript). This can result in data corruption if not done carefully. Then, when something comes in to challenge the programmer's expectations, the program breaks. For example, ZIP/postal codes are 5 numeric digits in the US, but in CA, they're of the form "A1A 1A1" (notice the space and letters). JavaScript's `parseInt` will return NaN on a Canadian postal code. Another one is house numbers; They look numeric, but can have letters or even fractions(!) in them.

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Re:The number input is the worst input by pphysch on Thursday September 15, 2022 @06:31PM (#32859275)

The first line is revealing; "contains" is not an operation usually performed on numbers.

Does the number 21 "contain" the number 2? Not in a meaningful sense.

However, the string "21" definitely contains the substring "2".

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Re:The number input is the worst input by eyelidlessness on Thursday September 15, 2022 @08:19PM (#32860304)

I’m not sure how it’s taught now, or how it might vary by teaching method, but the way I learned multiplication and division definitely treated the number 21 as “containing” the digit 2. I agree with the conclusion that a CC identifier should be treated as a string, but I don’t find this reasoning to be a compelling argument for that conclusion.

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Re:The number input is the worst input by kalleboo on Friday September 16, 2022 @01:47AM (#32862550)

It contains the digit 2, but not the number 2. It's a string of digits, not a singular number.

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Re:The number input is the worst input by MBCook on Friday September 16, 2022 @08:32AM (#32865255)

But that’s the difference isn’t it? In a number each digit represents groups of powers of ten. The number of hundreds, thousands, etc in the number.

The digits in a credit card number are meaningless. They have no relation to each other. If you choose two digits next to each other one doesn’t represent groups of 10x as much as the other digit. Or any other quantity.

The digits are effectively just symbols, not quantities like in a mathematical representation.

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Re:The number input is the worst input by zmgsabst on Thursday September 15, 2022 @04:58PM (#32858376)

That excerpt is clearly describing operations on the digits that compose the string and not arithmetic on the CC number as a single integer.

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