Is it a good idea to use an integer column for storing US ZIP codes in a database?

I [learned recently][1] that in Ruby one reason you would want to avoid this is because there are some zip codes that begin with leading zeroes, which–if stored as in integer–will automatically be converted to octal.

From [the docs][2]:

> You can use a special prefix to write numbers in decimal, hexadecimal, octal or binary formats. For decimal numbers use a prefix of 0d, for hexadecimal numbers use a prefix of 0x, for octal numbers use a prefix of 0 or 0o…


[1]:

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[2]:

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I think the ZIP code in the int datatype can affect the ML-model. Probably, the higher the code can create outlier in the data for the calculation

ZIP Codes are traditionally digits, as well as a hyphen for Zip+4, but there is at least one Zip+4 with a hyphen and capital letters:

10022-SHOE

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Realistically, a lot of business applications will not need to support this edge case, even if it is valid.