MeridianMERIDIAN

Height

identity.person.height

Person height in cm, inches, or feet.inches format (e.g., 180cm, 5'10", 180). Transforms to DOUBLE (centimeters). Decompose extracts value and unit.

Worked samples

DuckDB 1.5.5 · finetype 0.6.64

ValueAs DOUBLEunitvalue
180 cm180.0CM180.0
5'10"177.8FT5.0
70 inches177.8INCHES70.0
6 ft182.88FT6.0

Shape

Pattern
^[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?\s*(cm|in|ft|inches|feet)?$|^[0-9]+'[0-9]+"$
ValueLengthShape
180 cm6matches
5'10"5matches
70 inches9matches
6 ft4matches
180 c5rejected: one character short

Told apart

Going the other way, this type's own rule accepts 1 of 4 samples of Gender Code.

Background

Origin

FineType defines this type itself, as identity.person.height in its identity label definitions.[1] FineType's definition covers a person's height written in centimetres, in inches, or in feet and inches, such as 180cm or 5'10".[1]

The units themselves are fixed by international agreement: since 1959 the foot has been exactly 0.3048 metres by definition.[2] The inch has been defined as exactly 25.4 mm since the adoption of the international yard.[3] One foot is twelve inches.[3] The prime symbol, ′, is commonly used for the foot, and it is often approximated by an apostrophe.[2] The inch is traditionally written with a double prime, ″, which is often approximated by a double quotation mark.[3]

Use

North American driving licences show how one record can carry height in more than one shape. (Meridian's view) The 2020 AAMVA DL/ID Card Design Standard prints height on US cards in feet and inches, with the example 6’-01” for 6 foot 1 inch.[4] The same standard prints height on Canadian cards in centimetres, with the example 181 cm.[4] The standard's barcode example writes 6'1'' as 073 in, padded with a leading zero.[4]

Among the British public, the foot is widely used as a measurement of height.[2]

Where you'll meet it

The US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey records standing height in its 2017-2018 body measures file as the variable BMXHT, labelled Standing Height (cm).[5] That file's codebook gives an observed range for BMXHT of 78.3 to 197.7.[5]

Sources

  1. [1]finetype/labels/definitions_identity.yamlFineType
  2. [2]Foot (unit)secondary source
  3. [3]Inchsecondary source
  4. [4]2020 AAMVA DL/ID Card Design Standardstandard
  5. [5]Body Measures (BMX_J)dataset

Detection notes

v1 migration: Was person.height. Transform converts to centimeters. Handles ft'in" notation, inches, cm, feet. Decompose extracts value and unit.

Use it

CLI · DuckDB
$ finetype infer -i "180 cm" --mode column
→ identity.person.height

SELECT ft_infer('180 cm');
-- → 'identity.person.height'
Cast expression
CASE
  WHEN UPPER({col}) LIKE '%FT%' OR {col} LIKE '%''%' THEN
    (CAST(REGEXP_EXTRACT({col}, '^([0-9]+)', 1) AS DOUBLE) * 30.48) +
    (CAST(COALESCE(NULLIF(REGEXP_EXTRACT({col}, '''([0-9]+)', 1), ''), '0') AS DOUBLE) * 2.54)
  WHEN UPPER({col}) LIKE '%IN%' THEN CAST(REGEXP_EXTRACT({col}, '^([0-9.]+)', 1) AS DOUBLE) * 2.54
  ELSE CAST(REGEXP_EXTRACT({col}, '^([0-9.]+)', 1) AS DOUBLE)
END

Schema

https://meridian.online/schemas/identity.person.height · Frictionless type number

finetype taxonomy identity.person.height -o json-schema

Type Registry