GeoNames Forum

I've just downloaded the latest copy of the French postal codes file, and found that it now includes CEDEX codes.
CEDEX codes are postal codes allocated to a single company. Wikipedia has a quick primer on them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_France#CEDEX
Here is an example of what I found in the Geonames file: the town of Agen has about 20 postal codes: http://www.geonames.org/postalcode-search.html?q=agen&country=FR
The French post office's official postcode lookup up tool (found here: http://www.laposte.fr/sna/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=59) will list the same results as Geonames, but with the additional information that all but one are in fact CEDEX postal codes.
I guess that the inclusion of CEDEX codes is a bug?

richardbarran wrote:

I guess that the inclusion of CEDEX codes is a bug?

It is not a bug.
CEDEX codes (and some other special codes such as ARMEES for military places) are valid postal codes according to LaPoste database.

Now if you want to get only "ordinary" postal codes you can use this rule :

when there is more than one code for a single city, keep only codes ending with '00' (Ex: NANTES = 44100 44000 44300 44200).
If result is empty, keep codes ending by '0' (Ex: GENNEVILLIERS = 92230).

In GeoNames, we are planning to add the word "CEDEX" to those special codes (Ex: GENNEVILLIERS "92230", "92626 CEDEX", etc).