normalise_postcodes function

Normalise postal codes

Some special postcodes are used in addresses, such as codes for post office boxes. This helper converts those to the postcode for the closest normal suburb if there is a reasonable clear match. If there is no good match, the postcodes are left unchanged.

normalise_postcodes(codes)

Arguments

• codes: Character vector of postcodes (or coercible to one).

Returns

Character vector of the same size as the input, but with the normalised postcodes.

Details

Note that this goes a little further than the aliases that are registered with cartographer (which only account for postcodes with no geospatial data in the ABS dataset).

Examples

normalise_postcodes(c(1685, 2000, 1010, 2129, 2145))