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QR Codes seemingly are becoming more commonplace in the world today. I, myself, am probably one of 3 people worldwide without a smartphone thus unable to use a QR reader. The convenient possibilities in QR codes seem endless as I've seen them on so many types of products I use daily. I've noticed they are made up of many unique patterns but my question is will it come to a point where there are no more QR codes because all of the patterns have been used up (see IPv4)?

Christopher Chipps
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Why would it matter if the code you wanted to use was used by someone else for some other purpose or not? You create the QR code that does what you need to do, it doesn't matter whether or not someone else has used that same QR code for some other purpose or not.

If I want to bring you to serverfault, I give you this link http://www.serverfault.com because that's what brings you to serverfault. It makes no difference to me whether someone else has used that same URL for some other purpose or not, it's the URL I want you to go to, so it's the one I give you. The same thing applies with QR codes. I give you the code that corresponds to what I want to happen, and I don't care if someone else used that same code for some other purpose.

In some alternate universe, http://www.serverfault.com may take you to a porn site. But I don't care because I'm not in that universe. It does what I want in the context I plan to use it, so I use it.

David Schwartz
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Obviously as the QR code is made of a matrix of fixed size dots, either black or white, there will be a total limit of variations.

However don't think of QR codes as IP addresses, think of them more like encoded URL's - certain combinations of dots may be no use to anyone. Current QR codes can store up to 1852 chars.

However if you look at the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code - there have been various versions of QR codes, it wouldn't surprise me if at some point a newer standard superceeds current QR codes with either a bigger matrix of dots, smaller dots or both.

Robin Gill
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  • Thank you for the detailed article link. It's real exciting to see technology like QR codes expanding and being used so widely now. I guess I felt it would be a shame to see something like this be limited in some way but I guess it really can't be if new standards are enacted thus making the codes up to date and more efficient. Appreciate the clarification about these issues. – Christopher Chipps Jan 15 '12 at 20:46