I would have used do shell script "sed -ne 's/^\\(..\\)" & zip & ".*$/\\1/p' zcta5.txt" but the principle is the same. You could also script TextEdit or BBEdit... The variations I tried with pure AppleScript were excruciatingly slow, but I might just be doing it wrong. There are also web services, e.g. http://www.webservicex.net/uszip.asmx, but my attempts to call those using AppleScript's SOAP functionality also failed. On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Mark Lively <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > All you really need is a file with the data and then grep for the zip code. > > The file I used was http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zcta5.txt > > set zip to "66603" > do shell script "grep \"" & zip & " 5-Digit\" > /Users/lively/Desktop/zcta5.txt | cut -c 1,2" > > > On Mar 19, 2009, at 6:14 PM, Stockly, Ed wrote: > >> Is it possible, from a script, to determine the state from the zip code? >> >> I have a script that reads an address from a data base, but the address >> doesn't contain a state. (In the past all the user's addresses were in >> California, now they are covering listings other states.) >> >> (The user is working on getting the state inserted in the data in future >> builds, but until then we have hundreds of addresses that need to be >> fixed). >> >> ES >> > -- Mark J. Reed <[log in to unmask]>