The EAN-5 is a 5-digit

European Article Number The International Article Number (also known as European Article Number or EAN) is a standard describing a barcode symbology and numbering system used in global trade to identify a specific retail product type, in a specific packaging configurati ...

code, and is a supplement to the EAN-13 barcode used on books. It is used to give a suggestion for the price of the book. ISBN Encoding – Country and Currency Values Description

Encoding

The Encoding of EAN-5 characters is very similar to that of the other

s. The only difference is that the digits are separated by 01. The EAN-5 always begins with '01011.' Also, the R-Code is not used. The structure of the barcode is based on the

checksum A checksum is a small-sized block of data derived from another block of digital data for the purpose of detecting errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage. By themselves, checksums are often used to verify data ...

. In order to compute the checksum, multiply each of the digits by either 3 or 9, alternating each time. Then add them and then do a mod 10. So the checksum for 05415 MN is 1 based on the following calculations: 0*3=0 5*9=45 4*3=12 1*9=9 5*3=15 ---------- 81 % 10 = 1 Once you have the checksum digit, you can look up the structure in the following table. Note that the checksum digit is not in the final 5 digits, and is not intended to validate the 5 digit data, but rather to validate the reading of the EAN-5 overall. {, class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" , +Example - encoding 52495 , - ! Start !! 5 (G) !! Separator !! 2 (L) !! Separator !! 4 (G) !! Separator !! 9 (L) !! Separator !! 5 (L) , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , {{mono, 0110001

References

NACS CodesBarcode Reference
- Section 6.1.46.2
Barcode Writer
- The basis for the barcode structure

- Two-Character and Five-Character to UPC symbol. Barcodes