Sounds like some sort of idea yes. I suppose it would need to be defined as to how exactly the administrator of the cart would like this to work.
eg. Should there be a free text box where the administrator could list full UK postcodes separated by ";" for example
Code:
m1 1aa; m1 1ab; m1 1ac; m1 2a;
Or would this be too times consuming supposing the admiministrator needed to have postcodes from several ranges... for instance if he wanted all postcode regions beginning with "m1 1". So it would be ideal if the script were smart enough to know a range of postcodes from a single postcode, for example:
Where the first two entries are ranges, but the final one is a specific code.
Not sure if this would work with Bagi's suggestion to convert to numbers?
Something else I thought of, which might be easier? Is why not move away from the zipcode and take it to the town/city level. So have the shipping variable to be based upon town/city entered in the postal address as opposed to postcode? If the the city in the shipping address matches that entered in the shipping module, then it's selected as a valid shipping method. For example;
Code:
chesterfield; sheffield;
This could be slightly better, because obviously towns cover large areas and ranges of postcodes. So it gets around the problem if the above method of postcode ranges doesnt work?!
Hmm lots of things to consider I guess.