Falsehoods Programmers Believe About International Bank Account Numbers (IBANs)

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Note that the United Kingdom's ISO code is GB, it's the DNS that is wrong. The ISO code UK is reserved and won't be assigned.

(GB isn't a great code choice. The country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Great Britain is only the large island and excludes Northern Ireland. Occasionally one sees car number plates in Northern Ireland where the GB has been altered or removed. [I realise cars is a different coding system, but it's the second most commonly seen for people, after DNS.])

Yes, I didn’t quite understand this statement:

> IBAN country codes are the same as ISO3166-1 alpha-2 country codes. Quite dangerously this is mostly, but not always the case. Take for example the United Kingdom (UK vs. GB)

ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 assigns GB for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and banks in that jurisdiction also use GB for IBANs. Maybe this example should have been moved to the next point about IANA codes.

Thanks. Wrote that on a whim before heading out to read bilingual poetry for World Poetry Day here in southwest China. Updated.

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