Postal codes in Canada

In Canada, a postal code (French: code postal) is an alphanumeric designation based on geography that is necessary in forming a complete postal address.. Canada Post developed and maintains the system on a national basis. Canadian postal codes follow the format A1A 1A1, where A is a letter and 1 is a digit, with a space separating the third and fourth characters. In writing out the postal address for a location within Canada, the postal code is inserted into the address block following the name of city and abbreviation for the province or territory. The first three characters, or forward sortation area (FSA), correspond to a geographic area that can range in size from a dense urban neighbourhood to an expansive rural area, while the final three characters, or local delivery unit (LDU), corresponds to a subset of each FSA that could be an entire small town or a particular office building. As of October 2019, there were 876,445 postal codes, using FSAs from A0A in Newfoundland to Y1A in Yukon. Canada Post is explicit in that exactly one space is to be used in formatting a postal code. "Print the postal code in uppercase with the first three characters separated from the last three by one space. Don’t use hyphens."As such, from a computing perspective, the string contains strictly 7 characters.