From: Wilson Bilkovich <wilsonb@...>
Date: 2006-01-03T01:42:19+09:00
Subject: Re: The "ruby way" to break apart a name?

On 1/2/06, Kevin Brown <blargity@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday 02 January 2006 01:28, Wilson Bilkovich wrote:
> > This reminds me of U.S. street addresses.  I (on and off) do work that
> > interfaces with a huge IBM mainframe application. That system has
> > many, many separate fields for street addresses:
> > Number, Direction, Street/Route, Quad, Suffix, Apartment, Line2, etc.
> > I laughed at the way the original engineers had overbuilt. Ha ha ha.
> > ...
> > ...
> > Then I had to write code that took a single address string and split
> > it into its component parts, and I stopped laughing.
> > e.g. 123 N. NESTOR LANE RD. SE #10B
> >
> > Life is complicated, it turns out.
>
> That's nothing.  Addresses here are based on landmarks:
>
> De donde fue Texaco Viejo 1/2 C al E, 2 c al S
> City Name, Department name (sometimes), Nicaragua
>
> Break that one up.
>
> (literal translation is: From where the old texaco USED TO BE (it's a petronic
> now), 1/2 a block to the east and 2 blocks to the south)  That is just how
> addresses are here.
>

That's insane. You win. Wow.