Posted to Emissions Forum on 6/11/2013

Hmmm ... interesting.

I don't have the fancy equipment that you used, and I have no doubt that you are speaking from experience, but I do wonder why the software engineer chose 'A' and 'L' for field delimiters, since either of them can appear in the VIN or the License. VINs less than 17 chars and Licenses less than seven chars would clearly be an invitation for an ambiguous coding, or at least a more complex parse, which seems silly when there appear to be plenty of non-alphanumeric choices.

Oh well ... maybe it's just because I don't know the real history behind it.

Michael Barry
Technician
Quick Stop Smog & More
Sacramento, California, USA