The EAN-2 is a supplement to the EAN-13 and UPC-A barcodes. It is often used on magazines and periodicals to indicate an issue number.
The encoding of EAN-2 characters is very similar to that of the other European Article Numbers. The only difference is that the digits are separated by 01. The EAN-2 always begins with "01011". Also, the R-Code is not used.
| Digit | L-code | G-code |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0001101 | 0100111 |
| 1 | 0011001 | 0110011 |
| 2 | 0010011 | 0011011 |
| 3 | 0111101 | 0100001 |
| 4 | 0100011 | 0011101 |
| 5 | 0110001 | 0111001 |
| 6 | 0101111 | 0000101 |
| 7 | 0111011 | 0010001 |
| 8 | 0110111 | 0001001 |
| 9 | 0001011 | 0010111 |
The structure of the barcode is based on the value of the two digit to be encoded. The two digits treated as a single two-digit number is reduced modulo 4 and used to find the parity pattern to be used. The parity pattern repeats every 4 values.
| Data to encode | Parity pattern | |
|---|---|---|
| 00 | LL | Encode as 0 from L table followed by 0 from L table |
| 01 | LG | Encode as 0 from L table followed by 1 from G table |
| 02 | GL | Encode as 0 from G table followed by 2 from L table |
| 03 | GG | Encode as 0 from G table followed by 3 from G table |
| 04 | LL | Encode as 0 from L table followed by 4 from L table |
| 05 | LG | Encode as 0 from L table followed by 5 from G table |
| 06 | GL | Encode as 0 from G table followed by 6 from L table |
| 07 | GG | Encode as 0 from G table followed by 7 from G table |
| ... | ... | |
| 98 | GL | Encode as 9 from G table followed by 8 from L table |
| 99 | GG | Encode as 9 from G table followed by 9 from G table |
| Start | 5 (L) | Separator | 3 (G) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01011 | 0110001 | 01 | 0100001 |
