Libpostal: A C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the world
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderI work for UPS as software developer and surprisingly, I work for the department that is responsible for parsing addresses and matching them with actual physical addresses. We cover US, CA & EU (incl. UK). In our department, we have a guy whose entire career at UPS is nothing but maintaining library that parses addresses. It is very hard to get things right, unless you maintain that library all the time. Genuinely wish you good luck !
Relevant? -> "Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses" (https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...) Discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8907301
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 230
- Total comments
- 64
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-04-06 | Libpostal 1.0: Conditional Random Fields trained on 1B open street addresses | albarrentine | 9 | 0 |
| 2018-12-28 | Libpostal: A C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the worldFirst breakout · Best thread | polm23 | 117 | 25 |
| 2025-07-09 | Libpostal: C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the worldLatest 20+ point return | nateb2022 | 104 | 39 |