This might sound a bit naive, but I’ve been wondering—is there any global standard for postal codes? Like an official system that could apply universally, or at least a central reference that ties together all the different countries’ codes?
I’ve been thinking about this more lately while working on a small location-based project, and the variety in postal code formats across countries is honestly overwhelming. Some are purely numeric, others mix letters and numbers, and some regions seem to not really use them at all.
Has anyone here come across tools, APIs, or datasets that try to consolidate world postal codes into one structure? Even just for lookup or validation purposes?
I’m not looking for perfect consistency (I know that’s probably impossible), but I’d love to hear how others handle this kind of thing—especially for apps or systems that need to work globally.
Thanks for any insight!
