The Standard JP Postal Matcher uses a four-step process to identify and match postal information.
Step 1: Initial Parsing
The first step in the Postal Matching process isolates words and phrases by breaking up the input attribute(s) into tokens. During the initial scan, the Postal Matcher uses commas or space characters in the input attribute to determine where one token ends and the next begins.
Example
Input record: 東京都台東区浅草4丁目10番 1110032
Initial token results: (six tokens)
| Token 1 | Token 2 | Token 3 | Token 4 | Token 5 | Token 6 |
| 東京都 | 台東区 | 浅草 | 4丁目 | １0番 | 1110032 |
Step 2: Table-Based Tokenizing
After initial tokens are created, the Postal Matcher scans each token against the Parser Definition tables to further identify the tokens. During this secondary identification process, all elements further identifiable via the Parsing Definition entries are also separated into tokens.
Example
Token results of previous step: (6 tokens)
東京都 | 台東区 | 浅草 | 4丁目 | ７番 | 1110032
Token results of this step: (12 tokens)
| Previous Results | New Results | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| 東京都 | 東京都 | Based on L1 lookup |
| 台東区 | 台東区 | Based on L2 lookup |
| 浅草 | 浅草 | Based on L3 lookup |
| 4丁目 | 4 | 丁目 | Based on Chome lookup |
| 10番 | 10 | 番 | Based on Ban lookup |
| 1110032 | 1110032 | See Step 3. |
Step 3: Mask-Based Data Identification
Any token that remains unknown after the table look-up process is subsequently reviewed against a set of pre-defined masks (data shapes) in the Parser Definition table.
Example
For example, 1100000 is identified as a postcode based on pr_postcode: 1100000
| 1100000 | pr_postcode: 1100000 | Recognized as postcode based on mask lookup. |
Step 4: Output to PREPOS
The Postal Matcher passes results of the data identification process to the PREPOS program. See Analyzing the Postal Matcher Results for Asian Countries.