I'm sure their system has its faults, but I find shipping to the UK via postal code quite easy.

"A full postcode identifies a group of addresses (typically around ten) or a major delivery point."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdo...

reticulates 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fun fact, a postcode can represent up to 100 addresses, apartment buildings with more than 100 units have multiple postcodes. Sometimes third-party systems will only recognize a subset of those postcodes (e.g: a system might assume a building only has 1 postcode) which can lead to some residents being in the geographic region for a service while others are not despite being in the same building.

Also postcode data is licensed by the Royal Mail, not free.

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cornedor an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As someone from the Netherlands I’ve been very surprised at how far “ahead” we seem to be here. Just a postcode can point you to a street, even the side of the street (right or left hand), a house number than gives you the exact building. That is how people are used to enter their address here.

When I had to work with addresses in other countries, I found out that is not that normal.

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cjs_ac 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interestingly, there are no polygons for UK postcodes, because UK postcodes don’t represent a geographical area; instead, they represent one or more discrete points.

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xp84 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

ZIPs don't represent areas either. They represent routes, so a collection of paths on a road map is bundled together and named with a ZIP. If you built a new house in between towns, whichever post office decides to serve it would extend one of their lines to go past your house, and then you are assigned that ZIP code. Since it's all based on their convenience, they don't pay any mind to things like city limits or even in some cases state lines.

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russdill an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Given how postcodes are supposed to work, this is what I would expect. Curious if many of the polygons in the data set contain more than one polygon and or if there is any overlap

	▲	kube-system an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> how postcodes are supposed to work Not sure under what basis you think they are "supposed" to be a certain way but postal codes originated as a signifiers of areas, even in the UK. US postal codes absolutely have overlap in area, because they do not divide land, they direct delivery routing.

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EwanToo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I know what you're saying, but Ordnance Survey sells the polygons anyway.

https://docs.os.uk/osngd/data-structure/administrative-and-s...

	▲	cjs_ac an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That’s naughty of them. I wonder how SW1A 1AA (Buckingham Palace) and SW1A 0AA (the House of Commons) are represented.

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reaperducer 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"A full postcode identifies a group of addresses (typically around ten) or a major delivery point."

The United States can be more granular, as a "full postcode" equivalent in the United States is ZIP+4, which can resolve down to an individual building, mailbox, or person, depending on the characteristics of the location.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code#ZIP+4

	▲	twodave 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And even for those where it isn’t one exact person/box there is a 2 digit delivery point code that often is included on the end.