[headPoet]

Addresses in Scotland use a slash to separate flat number from street number; e.g. 15/4 West Wallaby Way is equivalent to Building 15, Flat4, West Wallaby Way.

I've had multiple websites tell me that my address isn't valid, and some delivery companies remove the number after the slash so the delivery driver knows which building, but not which flat.

[terribleperson]

To me, this is very similar to the recent post about email address validation. Very often, companies feel the need to validate certain inputs themselves and do a terrible job, when there's a better solution.

When it comes to addresses, if they're in the U.S. there is an easy way to validate delivery addresses - the USPS. They offer free access to an API that includes address validation, and thankfully most shipping services now use it. Some services still screw things up, but its less of a problem than it used to be. I notice that the Royal Mail equivalent is paid. Perhaps that's part of the problem, or perhaps the Royal Mail validator fails addresses with slashes in it.

I also noticed that the Royal Mail is a publicly traded company. I'll uh, refrain from commenting on that.

[Kon-Peki]

> the USPS... offer free access to an API that includes address validation, and thankfully most shipping services now use it.

Unfortunately not all. My street "number", like 100,000 other houses near me, includes a letter in the middle. USPS will happily validate it correctly, but there are still websites I encounter from time to time that complain or refuse to work.

Where I am, 100 years ago, if your house wasn't inside a city, it simply didn't have an address. The fire departments got together and created a geographic encoding scheme that would allow them to find a house if they needed to. In the 1960s, the USPS adopted it as official. New homes continue to be issued addresses according to the scheme, even though it is not rural at all - it's inside one of the largest metro areas of the US.

[illirik]

If you don't mind, which metro area is this? I have an interest in street grids and address numbering systems; this just sounded like a peculiarity I'd like to read up on.

[Kon-Peki]

Based on your recent comments, it’s right in your own backyard! Formerly and currently unincorporated DuPage and Kane counties. It seems that you have to build a new street inside an established municipality for those houses to get “normal” addresses.

FYI, I went to college in the 90s with a kid that lived in a rural area in a very low population county in Indiana (one stop light in the entire county). His house still had the old rural route addressing (your address was the box where you received mail - potentially miles away - and not a street address as commonly understood https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_021.htm).

[mdaniel]

The addressing system in New Zealand is also some especial "I have seen things" and I never worked on it but my colleagues said that Tokyo was also "you should pull up a chair"

[Hallucinaut]

NZ is exceedingly plain so I don't get that comment. Most are of the form 1337 Great North Road Pt. Chevalier Auckland 1002

You could even omit Auckland as it's implied by the simple 1000-series postcode.

The property boom may have led to subdivisions making a 1337/2 necessary but the vast majority of buildings outside of metro areas are detached, single family properties.

[Semaphor]

My house number is 12-16. Even some government websites in Germany can't handle that and go with 12 ( which, to be fair, works for all purposes, but it's incorrect)