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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T09:31:21+00:00

I have a bunch of items in my database. Each is assigned a unique

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I have a bunch of items in my database. Each is assigned a unique ID. I want to shorten this ID and display it on the page, so that if I user needs to contact us (over the phone) regarding a particular item, he can give us the shortened ID, rather than a really big number. Similar to the SKU, on sites like NCIX. Thus, I was thinking about encoding it in base 36. The problem with that, however, is letters like 1lI all look kind of the same. So, I was thinking about eliminating the look-alikes. Is this a good idea, or should I just use a really legible font?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Yes, you should eliminate sources of confusion. Because if a mistake can be made, someone will make it. Very easy to confuse 0 with O and I with l or 1 – hence should not use them both. Well that’s easy – since you won’t use 3 chars (i, L and o), just get the number in base 36-3 = 33 and convert

    SKU.replace('I','X').replace('L','Y').replace('O','Z')

    Inversely when given such code and before doing int(SKU, 33), you will have to return XYZ back to the confusing characters. Before that though, if – as expected – you are given by mistake L or I, replace with 1 and if given O, replace with 0. E.g. use SKU.translate() with
    string.maketrans('LIOXYZ','110IL0')

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