Too much validation

I tried to transfer some money online just now.

However, the bank's form didn't like the copy-and-pasted account number, saying that "no special characters, spaces, or letters are allowed".

Why can't the field simply allow (and ignore) spaces? It's certainly wide enough.

Strangely enough, the bank sort code field happily accepted the number with spaces in the usual "123 456 78" form. (It didn't always; the field used to be limited to eight characters so if you copy-pasted a normally-formatted sort code, the last two characters got lopped off.)

I wonder what would be so bad about allowing spaces in the bank account number.

Rev Mother Philip Newton

Check out the number of titles you can choose from on the drop-down list on this British Airways page!

New bookses

The first of my new books arrived!

Unfortunately, the C++ in a Nutshell that I bought in "used - like new" condition ("never read") turned out to have a big crease down the front cover, which rather annoyed me. (And "reduced-price copy with flaws" stamped on the bottom several times over.)

However, I'm not annoyed enough to try to fight it out with Amazon; I've heard that they can be remarkably unhelpful in dealing with Marketplace sellers, so I'll just suck up the money I paid and keep the book.

If I had known the condition beforehand, I might still have bought it, but likely not for the price I paid.

And Describing Morphosyntax had a slight crease, but one as bad.

But yay! New books!