> really, any perl programmer worth hiring should be able to do this while > sleeping.
Really? Postal de-duping may be harder than you think. What's the Reg-exp to convert or match FIELDS CORNER, BOSTON to DORCHESTER It's Not just canonicalization of abbreviations and moving Apartments etc to their own fields or not. The locality can be the city, neighborhood, or post-office ... or any combination. The Zip may be omitted, wrong, Zip+4, zip-with-wrong+4. Are Mrs. Williams-Smith and Mr Smith the same household? If it's single-family dwelling, or same apartment number, yes; if no apartment numbers given but known to be a multi-family building, can't assume same family ... and not just because Smith is common, as mother-in-law Cziwicz may be downstairs, as a separate mail patron, from daughter-in-law Smith-Cziwicz at same address but no apartment numbers in use. The post office will know, as will better quality commercial de-duping services. But you won't. Interesting if true, there may be TWO *correct* Zip+4's for my address, one by block and one by carrier route conversion. Bill _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
