Re: Parsing postal addresses

Brians0 wrote:
>
> I am looking for information on parsing postal addresses (especially
> US addresses). Specifically, I am looking for code and/or libraries to
> standardize addresses (in accordance with USPS rules). Examples in
> JavaCC, Lex/Yacc, and PCCTS or pointers to libraries that do this
> would be best, but any help would be much appreciated.


Seriously, in the face of a probable mess of a problem like this,
consider SNOBOL4, and in particular the SPITBOL compiler for SNOBOL4.
This system and its cousins have bailed out more than one programmer
in the face of nests of various incongruous data formats. The
language is now very well matured, and has an active following and a
net discussion group. It's both a character string handling - pattern
matching and a data structures handling language.


The SPITBOL compiler's < $300.00 U.S.; get it from CatsPaw for several
PC OS's, and other sources exist for other platforms. It comes with
its own full documentation, and more is available from CatsPaw.


An alternate is Icon -- it's free and exists for many platforms. Get
it by FTP from the University of Arizona. While Icon is more recent,
for pattern matching it's a bit more demanding to code than SNOBOL4 in
my experience.
--
All the best !


John H. Lindsay, Assistant Professor,
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
ROYAL MILITARY COLLEGE OF CANADA
PO BOX 17000 STN FORCES
KINGSTON ON K7K7B4 CANADA


e-mail: Lindsay_J@RMC.CA
Phone: (613) 541-5010-6419
Fax: (613) 542-8129
[I'd also consider perl. Its pattern matching isn't as powerful as
Snobol4's, but it makes up for it with decent control structures and a
high quality free implementation. -John]




--

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