> -----Original Message-----
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of McKown, John
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Howard Brazee
> >
> > On 11 May 2008 14:26:06 -0700, David Alcock wrote:
> >
> > >Ever since the Web came along I've been annoyed by those web sites
> > >that won't accept spaces or dashes like for credit cards and phone
> > >numbers. I know that even ancient mainframe COBOL has
> > >support for removing them with one command. I see that it's
> > >just pure laziness as I suspected all along:
> > >
> > > http://www.unixwiz.net/ndos-shame.html
> >
> > I've seen "too much editing" being done in CoBOL as well. Editing
> > for stuff that doesn't matter - and which needs to be changed when
> > conditions change.
> >
> > I hate the programming to make it hard to enter your credit cards,
but
> > I also dislike it when they don't let me put in a 80301-2472 zip
code.
> > There are foreign postal codes that *require* longer fields. And
the
> > U.S. postal service wants these as well.
> >
> > And let me type in phone numbers with dashes and parenthesis if I
> > want.
>
> True! Validation of "postal codes" is a nightmare. Unlike
> credit card numbers and telephone numbers, each individual
> government makes up its own rules. The only way to validate
> is to first get the ISO
> (international) country code, then possibly have a validation
> for each country.
>
> The other thing that irritates many is the US (and English?)
> centric "First Name", "Middle Name (or initial)", "Last
> Name". I know that Hispanics often have a LOT of "middle"
> names, and they are important to them. But how to allow that
> is a difficulty that I would prefer to avoid. Along with the
> usual "How many characters should I allow for a name?".
Don't forget the "multi-word" surnames, like Van de Graaf, de la Hoya,
etc. I'm sure those folks tire from receiving form-letter
acknowledgements that start with "Dear Mr. Van:" or "Dear Mr. de:".
-jc-
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