French Postal Barcode

The postal barcode is a coding system used by French postal company LaPoste to digitally represent postal codes. It works by using bars and dots that represent the digits of the postcode, making them easier to read by sorting machines.

The French postal barcode uses bars and dots (or space), which are read from right to left. It encodes the numbers for the Postal/ZIP code or code Cedex (routing code) and (sometimes) the street number (distribution code). It is located, on most automated mails, usually at the opposite of the stamp.

The code is a substitution using this table:

To decode, substitute the vertical bars by the corresponding numbers and read from right to left.

The message consists of sticks and dots (or spaces) by groups of 6: 4 lines and 2 dots, for a french postal code it is at least 30 chars in total.

It is often printed on envelopes or packages, and its distinctive format makes it easy to spot visually.

Any reference to the postman's work, the sorting of mail or the emails is a clue.

The postal barcode used by La Poste (France) for sorting mail does not contain information on the date on which a piece of mail was left.

To know the date on which a letter was posted, it is the postal stamp, generally affixed to stamps, which contain the time marks (the date).

Also, if the mail uses a tracking number, temporal information may be provided by La Poste and can make it possible to know on what date the mail was scanned for the first time (but not to know on what date it was deposited, if the scan did not take place immediately).