TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Leading Zeros?

Re: Leading Zeros?

Barry Margolin (barmar@alum.mit.edu)
Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:02:46 -0500

In article <telecom24.70.4@telecom-digest.org>, AES
<siegman@stanford.edu> wrote:

> Are there any kind of published refs or computer standards or human
> interface guidelines on the use of leading zeros? ZIP codes use 'em,
> phone numbers don't?

If leading zeroes are intended to be significant, don't use a numeric
data type for the field. Program it as a character string, since
that's what it actually is (if you want to restrict it to digits, you
may need to write a separate validation routine for that).

Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***

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