+The Snowdog Posted April 25, 2017 Share Posted April 25, 2017 Re: https://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=221 Not a feature request or bug report, this is just my curious mind wanting to know...why did the programmers decide to use Base 31 (with five letters omitted, that curiously enough spell LOUIS) for GC ID codes rather than just go with Base 36? Quote Link to comment
Moun10Bike Posted April 25, 2017 Share Posted April 25, 2017 The primary reason why those certain letters were omitted is because they are easily visibly confused with other characters: a lower-case "L" can look like a "1", "S" looks like a "5", etc. There was also thought given to preventing the automatic creation of obscene words (in English). Quote Link to comment
+The Snowdog Posted April 25, 2017 Author Share Posted April 25, 2017 Yes, did some more digging and found that out. There is a nice recap on the GC5KW17 cache page as well. Thanks for a quick reply. One of our local puzzle lords put one out based on that math and now we are all exploring that little bit of geo history. The primary reason why those certain letters were omitted is because they are easily visibly confused with other characters: a lower-case "L" can look like a "1", "S" looks like a "5", etc. There was also thought given to preventing the automatic creation of obscene words (in English). Quote Link to comment
+HHL Posted April 25, 2017 Share Posted April 25, 2017 Re: https://support.Grou...=kb.page&id=221 Not a feature request or bug report, this is just my curious mind wanting to know...why did the programmers decide to use Base 31 (with five letters omitted, that curiously enough spell LOUIS) for GC ID codes rather than just go with Base 36? TPTB let out the chars " i S o u l " to avoid using f* words and other swear words. Hans Quote Link to comment
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