Libpostal: C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the world

Wow, ambitious project. Anybody who has tried to verify addresses can tell you that the staggering number of different formats and conventions around the world make it and almost intractable problem. So many countries have wildly informal standards and people putting down just whatever they want because the mailman "just knows".

> Anybody who has tried to verify addresses

Why would one try to "verify" addresses that one knows nothing about?

> because the mailman "just knows"

The mailman does "just know", and the mailman is who the address is for. Web forms I have seen that have tried to "verify" my address have never done so in a way that made the address better for the mailman.

EDIT: I've long thought that web forms should not have separate "street", "street line 2", "number", "apartment", "whatever" fields. Instead they should offer a multi-line input field labeled "this will go straight on the address label, write whatever you like but it's your problem if it doesn't arrive". You'd probably still need separate fields for town/postcode for calculating postage. And of course it wouldn't work because the downstream delivery company would also insist on something it can "verify".

> Why would one try to "verify" addresses that one knows nothing about?

So you aren't shipping your product to some place that doesn't exist. Also, some KYC requires that you verify the address of the person.