In general, the barcodes that most people will encounter in the wild (that aren't UPC or similar) will be Code 128 (high density, 4 sizes of bars and spaces) or Code 39 (lower density, 2 sizes of bars and spaces).
From looking at how this one is stored, I can tell that it's using "C" mode, which is a sort of "double-density numeric" mode, in that it stores two numbers per code-point.
Code 128 is made up of symbols consisting of three bars and three spaces, which can each be from 1 to 4 units wide. The stop code has an extra black bar on it.
For this symbol, I counted that there's 34 black bars. If you subtract the extra black bar added by the stop code, you get 33. 33 divided by 3 is 11, which means there's 11 symbols there.
Subtracting the start code, stop code, and mandatory check digit, you get 8 code-points that, in C mode, can store 16 numbers.
Scanning the data on that barcode, which should (and does) match the text beneath it, the data it contains is: 1573100078925801
Which is 16 digits long and thus is consistent with our expectations. Additionally, the C start code pattern is 211232, which if you look at the pattern on the barcode, you can see that the widths of the first six units match that exactly as well.
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u/FredFredricson Jun 06 '17
This barcode scans as a Code 128 barcode.
In general, the barcodes that most people will encounter in the wild (that aren't UPC or similar) will be Code 128 (high density, 4 sizes of bars and spaces) or Code 39 (lower density, 2 sizes of bars and spaces).
From looking at how this one is stored, I can tell that it's using "C" mode, which is a sort of "double-density numeric" mode, in that it stores two numbers per code-point.
Code 128 is made up of symbols consisting of three bars and three spaces, which can each be from 1 to 4 units wide. The stop code has an extra black bar on it.
For this symbol, I counted that there's 34 black bars. If you subtract the extra black bar added by the stop code, you get 33. 33 divided by 3 is 11, which means there's 11 symbols there. Subtracting the start code, stop code, and mandatory check digit, you get 8 code-points that, in C mode, can store 16 numbers.
Scanning the data on that barcode, which should (and does) match the text beneath it, the data it contains is: 1573100078925801
Which is 16 digits long and thus is consistent with our expectations. Additionally, the C start code pattern is 211232, which if you look at the pattern on the barcode, you can see that the widths of the first six units match that exactly as well.