2010-08-14 Saturday - Postal Address Parsing

I came across an interesting challenge today: How to properly parse an address line in a postal address.

Initially, you might think that to be a relatively simple challenge - but spend a few minutes reading the United States Postal Service Pub 28 (Postal Addressing Standards) - and you'll appreciate some of the nuances of the problem.  In particular, see the examples beginning on page-9 to get a quick idea of the variations that would need to be handled.  At 208 pages - that's quite a bit of information.

A few quick Google searches turned-up a few interesting links that were relevant to my search for a possible solution:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/html/B10657_01/19dataqu.htm

http://software.ictarena.com/forums/t/123474.aspx

http://www.toadworld.com/Portals/0/stevenf/Dynamic%20SQL.pdf

http://www.address-parser.com/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16413/parse-usable-street-address-city-state-zip-from-a-string

Canada specific information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Canada