Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

Re:Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses by jzwinck on Thursday May 30, 2013 @08:25AM (#5792033)

The example of "GB Technical Services, Unit W7a, Warwick House, 18 Forge Lane, Minworth Industrial Park, Minworth, Sutton Coldfield, B76 1AH, United Kingdom" could still reasonably be written within five lines this way:

GB Technical Services

Unit W7a, Warwick House, 18 Forge Lane

Minworth Industrial Park, Minworth

Sutton Coldfield, B76 1AH, United Kingdom

I don't think British people would actually write it as eight lines. Does anyone have a better example of an address that does not reasonably/conventionally fit on five freeform lines?

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Re:Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses by pm215 on Thursday May 30, 2013 @10:36AM (#5792749)

You could compress it a bit, but the standard is to write the postcode and the country name on lines of their own, and usually the post town too (that's "Sutton Coldfield" here). So trying to compress down to five lines would require really weird formatting (and possibly confuse the automatic postcode-reading hardware).

(http://www.royalmail.com/personal/help-and-support/How-do-I-... specifically wants postcode on a line of its own.)

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Re:Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses by JamesAcorn on Saturday June 01, 2013 @04:06AM (#5803214)

You could get away addressing that as:

GB Technical Services

Unit W7a

Warwick House

18 Forge Lane

B76 1AH

The postcode effectively encodes the post town and county. It may not be easily 'human readable' but Royal Mail will deliver it no problems.

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