What is the ultimate postal code and zip regex

Question

I m looking for the ultimate postal code and zip code regex  I m looking for something that will cover most  hopefully all  of the world

User · Answer

Given that there are so many edge cases for each country (eg. London addresses may use a slightly different format to the rest of the UK) I don't think that there is an ultimate regex other than maybe:

[0-9a-zA-Z]+

Best of going with a fairly broad pattern (well not quite as broad as the above), or treat each country/region with a specific pattern of its own!

UPDATE: However, it may be possible to dynamically construct a regex based upon lots of smaller, region specific rules - not sure about performance though!

Lots of country specific patterns can be found on the RegExLib site.

User · Answer

There are reasons beyond shipping for having an accurate postal code   Travel agencies doing tours that cross borders  Eurozone excepted of course  need this information ahead of time to give to the authorities  Often this information is entered by an agent that may or may not be familiar with such things   ANY method that can cut down on mistakes is a Good Idea trade   However  writing a regex that would cover all postal codes in the world would be insane

User · Answer

As others have pointed out  one regex to rule them all is unlikely  However  you can craft regular expressions for as many countries as you need using the address formatting info from the Universal Postal Union -- a little-known UN agency   For example  here are the address formatting rules  including postal code  for a handful of countries  PDF format     Canada Japan Switzerland Russian Federation United States of America

User · Answer

Somebody was asking about list of formatting mailing addresses  and I think this is what he was looking for     Frank s Compulsive Guide to Postal Addresses  http   www columbia edu  fdc postal  Doesn t help much with street-level issues  however   My work uses a couple of tools to assist with this   - Lexis-Nexis services  including NCOA lookups  you ll get address standardization for  free   -  Melissa Data  http   www melissadata com

User · Answer

Please note that this is quite a hard problem  as stated by the accepted answer  I guess it didn t deter the folks at geonames org though  They have a file a country info file  which doesn t fit whole into this answer - limit is at 30000 chars apparently  There are regexes for about 150 countries   I extracted the bits relevant to this question here    AD     AD    d 3    AM    d 6    AR    A-Z  d 4  A-Z  3    AT    d 4    AU    d 4    AX     FI    d 5    AZ     AZ    d 4    BA    d 5    BB     BB    d 5    BD    d 4    BE    d 4    BG    d 4    BH    d 3  d    BM    A-Z  2  d 2    BN    A-Z  2  d 4    BR    d 8    BY    d 6    CA    ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVXY  d ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVWXYZ      d ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVWXYZ  d   CH    d 4    CL    d 7    CN    d 6    CR    d 4    CU     CP    d 5    CV    d 4    CX    d 4    CY    d 4    CZ    d 5    DE    d 5    DK    d 4    DO    d 5    DZ    d 5    EC    a-zA-Z  d 4  a-zA-Z    EE    d 5    EG    d 5    ES    d 5    ET    d 4    FI     FI    d 5    FM    d 5    FO     FO    d 3    FR    d 5    GB     A-Z  d 2  A-Z  2     A-Z  d 3  A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d 2  A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d 3  A-Z  2     A-Z  d A-Z  d A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d A-Z  d A-Z  2    GIR0AA    GE    d 4    GF    97 98 3 d 2    GG     A-Z  d 2  A-Z  2     A-Z  d 3  A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d 2  A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d 3  A-Z  2     A-Z  d A-Z  d A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d A-Z  d A-Z  2    GIR0AA    GL    d 4    GP    97 98  d 3    GR    d 5    GT    d 5    GU   969 d 2    GW    d 4    HN    A-Z  2  d 4    HR     HR    d 5    HT     HT    d 4    HU    d 4    ID    d 5    IL    d 5    IM     A-Z  d 2  A-Z  2     A-Z  d 3  A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d 2  A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d 3  A-Z  2     A-Z  d A-Z  d A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d A-Z  d A-Z  2    GIR0AA    IN    d 6    IQ    d 5    IR    d 10    IS    d 3    IT    d 5    JE     A-Z  d 2  A-Z  2     A-Z  d 3  A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d 2  A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d 3  A-Z  2     A-Z  d A-Z  d A-Z  2     A-Z  2  d A-Z  d A-Z  2    GIR0AA    JO    d 5    JP    d 7    KE    d 5    KG    d 6    KH    d 5    KP    d 6    KR     SEOUL    d 6    KW    d 5    KZ    d 6    LA    d 5    LB    d 4   d 4      LI    d 4    LK    d 5    LR    d 4    LS    d 3    LT     LT    d 5    LU    d 4    LV     LV    d 4    MA    d 5    MC    d 5    MD     MD    d 4    ME    d 5    MG    d 3    MK    d 4    MM    d 5    MN    d 6    MQ    d 5    MT    A-Z  3  d 2  d    MV    d 5    MX    d 5    MY    d 5    MZ    d 4    NC    d 5    NE    d 4    NF    d 4    NG    d 6    NI    d 7    NL    d 4  A-Z  2    NO    d 4    NP    d 5    NZ    d 4    OM    d 3    PF    97 98 7 d 2    PG    d 3    PH    d 4    PK    d 5    PL    d 5    PM   97500   PR    d 9    PT    d 7    PW   96940   PY    d 4    RE    97 98  4 7 8  d 2    RO    d 6    RS    d 6    RU    d 6    SA    d 5    SD    d 5    SE     SE    d 5    SG    d 6    SH   STHL1ZZ   SI     SI    d 4    SK    d 5    SM   4789 d   SN    d 5    SO    A-Z  2  d 5    SV     CP    d 4    SZ    A-Z  d 3    TC   TKCA 1ZZ   TH    d 5    TJ    d 6    TM    d 6    TN    d 4    TR    d 5    TW    d 5    UA    d 5    US   d 5  - d 4     UY    d 5    UZ    d 6    VA    d 5    VE    d 4    VI   d 5  - d 4     VN    d 6    WF   986 d 2    YT    d 5    ZA    d 4    ZM    d 5    CS    d 5      Hopefully I didn t make any mistake  my regex-fu is pretty weak

User · Answer

This looks like a good reference although it s not in Regex   Really  unless you re actually shipping something to your users  I don t think it s worth the effort   And if you are shipping it  there are address cleaning tools services you can look into to make it way easier on yourself

User · Answer

Big Jump forgot about line breaks  blanks and control characters    International postal codes are a kind of halting problem

User · Answer

Depending on your application  you might want to implement regex matching for the countries where most of your visitors originate and no validation for the rest  accept anything

User · Answer

If Zip Code allows characters and digits  alphanumeric   below regex would be used where it matches  5 or 9 or 10 alphanumeric characters with one hypen  -       0-9A-Za-z  5   0-9A-Za-z  9     0-9a-zA-Z  5 -  1  0-9a-zA-Z  4

User · Answer

Why are you doing this and why do you care   As Tom Ritter pointed out  it doesn t matter whether you even have a ZIP postal code at all  much less whether it s valid or not  until and unless you are actually going to be sending something to that address   Even if you expect that you will be sending them something someday  that doesn t mean you need a postal code today

User · Answer

If someone is still interested in how to validate zip codes I ve found a solution   Using Google Geocoding API we can check validity of ZIP code having both Country code and a ZIP code itself   For example I live in Ukraine so I can check like this  https   maps googleapis com maps api geocode json components postal code 80380 country UA  Or using JS API  https   developers google com maps documentation javascript geocoding ComponentFiltering  Where 80380 is valid ZIP for Ukraine  actually every         is valid   Google returns ZERO RESULTS status if nothing found  Or OK and a result if both are correct   Hope this will be helpful

User · Answer

This is a very simple RegEx for validating US Zipcode  not ZipCode Plus Four         089   1 4   d 5    Seems all five digit numeric are valid zipcodes except 00000  88888  amp  99999   I have tested this RegEx with http   regexpal com   SP

User · Answer

The problem is going to be that you probably have no good means of keeping up with the changing postal code requirements of countries on the other side of the globe and which you share no common languages   Unless you have a large enough budget to track this  you are almost certainly better off giving the responsibility of validating addresses to google or yahoo     Both companies provide address lookup facuilities through a programmable API

User · Answer

use these regx   ZIPREG array       US   gt    d 5    -   d 4            UK   gt    GIR  A-Z  d A-Z d     A-Z  2  d A-Z d           d A-Z  2           DE   gt   b    0 1-46-9  d 3       1-357-9  d 4       4  0-24-9  d 3       6  013-9  d 3    b        CA   gt     ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVXY  d ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVWXYZ     0 1   d ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVWXYZ  d          FR   gt    F-    2 A B    0-9  2   0-9  3          IT   gt    V- I-   0-9  5          AU   gt    0 289  0-9  2     1345689  0-9  3    2 0-8  0-9  2    290 0-9    291 0-4    7 0-4  0-9  2    7 8-9  0-9  2           NL   gt    1-9  0-9  3  s   a-zA-Z  2            ES   gt     1-9  2   0-9  1-9   1-9  0-9   0-9  3          DK   gt     D d  K k    -    1-9  1  0-9  3          SE   gt    s- S-  0 1  0-9  3  s  0-9  2          BE   gt    1-9  1  0-9  3          IN   gt    d 6

User · Answer

As noted elsewhere the variation around the world is huge  And even if something that matches the pattern does not mean it exists   Then  of course  there are many places where postcodes are not used  e g  much or Ireland

User · Answer

Every postal code system uses only A-Z and or 0-9 and sometimes space dash Not every country uses postal codes  ex  Ireland outside of Dublin   but we ll ignore that here  The shortest postal code format is Sierra Leone with NN The longest is American Samoa with NNNNN-NNNNNN You should allow one space or dash  Should not begin or end with space or dash   This should cover the above     i   a-z0-9  a-z0-9 -   0 10  a-z0-9

User · Answer

We use the following    Canada     A-Z  1  0-9  1   3      We raise to upper first   America   0-9  5                   -or-  0-9  5 - 0-9  4          10 digit zip   Other     Accept as is

User · Answer

Trying to cover the whole world with one regular expression is not completely possible  and certainly not feasible or recommended   Not to toot my own horn  but I ve written some pretty thorough regular expressions which you may find helpful    Canadian postal codes  Basic validation    ABCEGHJ-NPRSTVXY  1  0-9  1  ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  1      0-9  1  ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  1  0-9  1    Extended validation    A 0 ABCEGHJ-NPR  1 ABCEGHK-NSV-Y  2 ABHNV  5 A  8 A   B 0 CEHJ-NPRSTVW  1 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Y  2 ABCEGHJNRSTV-Z  3 ABEGHJ-NPRSTVZ  4 ABCEGHNPRV  5 A  6 L  9 A   C 0 AB  1 ABCEN   E 1 ABCEGHJNVWX  2 AEGHJ-NPRSV  3 ABCELNVYZ  4 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  5 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV  6 ABCEGHJKL  7 ABCEGHJ-NP  8 ABCEGJ-NPRST  9 ABCEGH   G 0 ACEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  1 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Y  2 ABCEGJ-N  3 ABCEGHJ-NZ  4 ARSTVWXZ  5 ABCHJLMNRTVXYZ  6 ABCEGHJKLPRSTVWXZ  7 ABGHJKNPSTXYZ  8 ABCEGHJ-NPTVWYZ  9 ABCHNPRTX   H 0 HM  1 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  2 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  3 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  4 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  5 AB  7 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Y  8 NPRSTYZ  9 ABCEGHJKPRSWX   J 0 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  1 ACEGHJ-NRSTXZ  2 ABCEGHJ-NRSTWXY  3 ABEGHLMNPRTVXYZ  4 BGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  5 ABCJ-MRTV-Z  6 AEJKNRSTVWYXZ  7 ABCEGHJ-NPRTV-Z  8 ABCEGHLMNPRTVXYZ  9 ABEHJLNTVXYZ   K 0 ABCEGHJ-M  1 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  2 ABCEGHJ-MPRSTVW  4 ABCKMPR  6 AHJKTV  7 ACGHK-NPRSV  8 ABHNPRV  9 AHJKLV   L 0  ABCEGHJ-NPRS   1 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  2 AEGHJMNPRSTVW  3 BCKMPRSTVXYZ  4 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  5 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTVW  6 ABCEGHJ-MPRSTV-Z  7 ABCEGJ-NPRST  8 EGHJ-NPRSTVW  9 ABCGHK-NPRSTVWYZ   M 1 BCEGHJ-NPRSTVWX  2 HJ-NPR  3 ABCHJ-N  4 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Y  5 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTVWX  6 ABCEGHJ-NPRS  7 AY  8 V-Z  9 ABCLMNPRVW   N 0 ABCEGHJ-NPR  1 ACEGHKLMPRST  2 ABCEGHJ-NPRTVZ  3 ABCEHLPRSTVWY  4 BGKLNSTVWXZ  5 ACHLPRV-Z  6 ABCEGHJ-NP  7 AGLMSTVWX  8 AHMNPRSTV-Y  9 ABCEGHJKVY   P 0 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Y  1 ABCHLP  2 ABN  3 ABCEGLNPY  4 NPR  5 AEN  6 ABC  7 ABCEGJKL  8 NT  9 AN   R 0 ABCEGHJ-M  1 ABN  2 CEGHJ-NPRV-Y  3 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Y  4 AHJKL  5 AGH  6 MW  7 ABCN  8 AN  9 A   S 0 ACEGHJ-NP  2 V  3 N  4 AHLNPRSTV-Z  6 HJKVWX  7 HJ-NPRSTVW  9 AHVX   T 0 ABCEGHJ-MPV  1 ABCGHJ-MPRSV-Y  2 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  3 ABCEGHJ-NPRZ  4 ABCEGHJLNPRSTVX  5 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  6 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTVWX  7 AENPSVXYZ  8 ABCEGHLNRSVWX  9 ACEGHJKMNSVWX   V 0 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTVWX  1 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  2 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  3 ABCEGHJ-NRSTV-Y  4 ABCEGK-NPRSTVWXZ  5 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  6 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  7 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Y  8 ABCGJ-NPRSTV-Z  9 ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z   X 0 ABCGX  1 A   Y 0 AB  1 A        0-9  1  ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  1  0-9  1    US ZIP codes    0-9  5  - 0-9  4      UK post codes     A-PR-UWYZ   0-9  1 2    A-HK-Y  0-9   A-HK-Y  0-9   0-9   ABEHMNPRV-Y     0-9  A-HJKS-UW     0-9  ABD-HJLNP-UW-Z  2   GIR  0AA   SAN  TA1   BFPO   C  O     0-9  1 4     ASCN BBND  BFS IQQ PCRN STHL TDCU TKCA   1ZZ       It is not possible to guarantee accuracy without actually mailing something to an address and having the person let you know when they receive it  but we can narrow things by down by eliminating cases that we know are bad

User · Answer

There is none   Postal zip codes around the world don t follow a common pattern  In some countries they are made up by numbers  in others they can be combinations of numbers an letters  some can contain spaces  others dots  the number of characters can vary from two to at least six     What you could do  theoretically  is create a seperate regex for every country in the world  not recommendable IMO  But you would still be missing on the validation part  Zip code 12345 may exist  but 12346 not  maybe 12344 doesn t exist either  How do you check for that with a regex    You can t

User · Answer

The unicode CLDR contains the postal code regex for each country   158 regex s in total     Download core zip from http   unicode org Public cldr 26 0 1  unzip core zip Take a look at common supplemental postalCodeData xml from the unzipped content  direct content  common supplemental postalCodeData xml    Google also has a web service with per-country address formatting information  including postal codes  here - http   i18napis appspot com address  I found that link via http   unicode org review pri180     Edit   Here a copy of postalCodeData xml regex     GB    GIR    0AA   AB AL B BA BB BD BH BL BN BR BS BT CA CB CF CH CM CO CR CT CV CW DA DD DE DG DH DL DN DT DY E EC EH EN EX FK FY G GL GY GU HA HD HG HP HR HS HU HX IG IM IP IV JE KA KT KW KY L LA LD LE LL LN LS LU M ME MK ML N NE NG NN NP NR NW OL OX PA PE PH PL PO PR RG RH RM S SA SE SG SK SL SM SN SO SP SR SS ST SW SY TA TD TF TN TQ TR TS TW UB W WA WC WD WF WN WR WS WV YO ZE   d  dA-Z       d ABD-HJLN-UW-Z  2    BFPO     d 1 4    JE    JE d  dA-Z       d ABD-HJLN-UW-Z  2    GG    GY d  dA-Z       d ABD-HJLN-UW-Z  2    IM    IM d  dA-Z       d ABD-HJLN-UW-Z  2    US     d 5     -  d 4      CA     ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVXY  d ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z      d ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z  d   DE     d 5    JP     d 3 - d 4    FR     d 2      d 3    AU     d 4    IT     d 5    CH     d 4    AT     d 4    ES     d 5    NL     d 4      A-Z  2    BE     d 4    DK     d 4    SE     d 3      d 2    NO     d 4    BR     d 5   -   d 3    PT     d 4    -  d 3      FI     d 5    AX    22 d 3    KR     d 3   -  d 3    CN     d 6    TW     d 3   d 2      SG     d 6    DZ     d 5    AD    AD d 3    AR      A-HJ-NP-Z    d 4   A-Z  3      AM     37   d 4    AZ     d 4    BH      1 0-2   2-9   d 2      BD     d 4    BB     BB d 5      BY     d 6    BM     A-Z  2      A-Z0-9  2    BA     d 5    IO    BBND 1ZZ   BN     A-Z  2      d 4    BG     d 4    KH     d 5    CV     d 4    CL     d 7    CR     d 4 5   d 3 - d 4    HR     d 5    CY     d 4    CZ     d 3      d 2    DO     d 5    EC      A-Z  d 4  A-Z      A-Z  2    d 6      EG     d 5    EE     d 5    FO     d 3    GE     d 4    GR     d 3      d 2    GL    39 d 2    GT     d 5    HT     d 4    HN        d 5      HU     d 4    IS     d 3    IN     d 6    ID     d 5    IL     d 5    JO     d 5    KZ     d 6    KE     d 5    KW     d 5    LA     d 5    LV     d 4    LB      d 4       d 4        LI     948 5-9    949 0-7     LT     d 5    LU     d 4    MK     d 4    MY     d 5    MV     d 5    MT     A-Z  3      d 2 4    MU      d 3  A-Z  2  d 3      MX     d 5    MD     d 4    MC    980 d 2    MA     d 5    NP     d 5    NZ     d 4    NI       d 4 -   d 3 - d 3  - d 1        NG      d 6      OM     PC    d 3    PK     d 5    PY     d 4    PH     d 4    PL     d 2 - d 3    PR    00 679  d 2     -  d 4      RO     d 6    RU     d 6    SM    4789 d   SA     d 5    SN     d 5    SK     d 3      d 2    SI     d 4    ZA     d 4    LK     d 5    TJ     d 6    TH     d 5    TN     d 4    TR     d 5    TM     d 6    UA     d 5    UY     d 5    UZ     d 6    VA    00120   VE     d 4    ZM     d 5    AS    96799   CC    6799   CK     d 4    RS     d 6    ME    8 d 4    CS     d 5    YU     d 5    CX    6798   ET     d 4    FK    FIQQ 1ZZ   NF    2899   FM     9694 1-4      -  d 4      GF    9 78 3 d 2    GN     d 3    GP    9 78  01  d 2    GS    SIQQ 1ZZ   GU    969 123  d    -  d 4      GW     d 4    HM     d 4    IQ     d 5    KG     d 6    LR     d 4    LS     d 3    MG     d 3    MH    969 67  d    -  d 4      MN     d 6    MP    9695 012     -  d 4      MQ    9 78 2 d 2    NC    988 d 2    NE     d 4    VI    008   0-4  d   5 01       -  d 4      PF    987 d 2    PG     d 3    PM    9 78 5 d 2    PN    PCRN 1ZZ   PW    96940   RE    9 78 4 d 2    SH     ASCN STHL  1ZZ   SJ     d 4    SO     d 5    SZ     HLMS  d 3    TC    TKCA 1ZZ   WF    986 d 2    XK     d 5    YT    976 d 2

[regex] What is the ultimate postal code and zip regex?

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