We have some code here, not written by me!, which queries by Canadian Postal Code, of which, their are several hundred thousand. Apparently, dropping the last

We have some code here, not written by me!, which queries by Canadian Postal Code, of which, their are several hundred thousand. Apparently, dropping the last character and requerying is the equivalent of a proximity search! This in itself is laughable. But the company sent the code back to the creators to have the ability to query by city added. Guess what. Apparently if you drop the last letter of a city, it's the equivalent of doing a proximity search! I must be totally turned around on this.