Ted MacNEIL wrote: >Careful. In Canada the first four digits identify the issuer.
Ooh, do tell - did some Googling but didn't find this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Insurance_Number talks about the first digit being significant, however. This still proves the point I believe you were making, i.e., that for SINs, packed decimal makes it much easier to be able to just check the first four nybbles (compared to binary). However, I doubt IBM invented packed for Canada (especially since the SIN was introduced after S/360). I didn't realize SINs also used Luhns. Interesting! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
