NAME¶
Geography::Countries - 2-letter, 3-letter, and numerical codes for countries.
SYNOPSIS¶
use Geography::Countries;
$country = country 'DE'; # 'Germany'
@list = country 666; # ('PM', 'SPM', 666,
# 'Saint Pierre and Miquelon', 1)
DESCRIPTION¶
This module maps country names, and their 2-letter, 3-letter and numerical
codes, as defined by the ISO-3166 maintenance agency [1], and defined by the
UNSD.
The "country" subroutine.¶
This subroutine is exported by default. It takes a 2-letter, 3-letter or
numerical code, or a country name as argument. In scalar context, it will
return the country name, in list context, it will return a list consisting of
the 2-letter code, the 3-letter code, the numerical code, the country name,
and a flag, which is explained below. Note that not all countries have all 3
codes; if a code is unknown, the undefined value is returned.
There are 3 categories of countries. The largest category are the current
countries. Then there is a small set of countries that no longer exist. The
final set consists of areas consisting of multiple countries, like
Africa. No 2-letter or 3-letter codes are available for the second two
sets. (ISO 3166-3 [3] defines 4 letter codes for the set of countries that no
longer exist, but the author of this module was unable to get her hands on
that standard.) By default, "country" only returns countries from
the first set, but this can be changed by giving "country" an
optional second argument.
The module optionally exports the constants "CNT_F_REGULAR",
"CNT_F_OLD", "CNT_F_REGION" and "CNT_F_ANY".
These constants can also be important all at once by using the tag
":FLAGS". "CNT_F_ANY" is just the binary or of the three
other flags. The second argument of "country" should be the binary
or of a subset of the flags "CNT_F_REGULAR", "CNT_F_OLD",
and "CNT_F_REGION" - if no, or a false, second argument is given,
"CNT_F_REGULAR" is assumed. If "CNT_F_REGULAR" is set,
regular (current) countries will be returned; if "CNT_F_OLD" is set,
old, no longer existing, countries will be returned, while
"CNT_F_REGION" is used in case a region (not necessarely) a country
might be returned. If "country" is used in list context, the fifth
returned element is one of "CNT_F_REGULAR", "CNT_F_OLD"
and "CNT_F_REGION", indicating whether the result is a regular
country, an old country, or a region.
In list context, "country" returns a 5 element list. To avoid having
to remember which element is in which index, the constants
"CNT_I_CODE2", "CNT_I_CODE3", "CNT_I_NUMCODE",
"CNT_I_COUNTRY" and "CNT_I_FLAG" can be imported. Those
constants contain the indices of the 2-letter code, the 3-letter code, the
numerical code, the country, and the flag explained above, respectively. All
index constants can be imported by using the ":INDICES" tag.
The "code2", "code3", "numcode" and "countries" routines.¶
All known 2-letter codes, 3-letter codes, numerical codes and country names can
be returned by the routines "code2", "code3",
"numcode" and "countries". None of these methods is
exported by default; all need to be imported if one wants to use them. The tag
":LISTS" imports them all. In scalar context, the number of known
codes or countries is returned.
REFERENCES¶
The 2-letter codes come from the ISO 3166-1:1997 standard [2]. ISO 3166 bases
its list of country names on the list of names published by the United
Nations. This list is published by the Statistical Division of the United
Nations [4]. The UNSD uses 3-letter codes, and numerical codes [5]. The
information about old countries [6] and regions [7] also comes from the United
Nations.
In a few cases, there was a conflict between the way how the United Nations
spelled a name, and how ISO 3166 spells it. In most cases, is was word order
(for instance whether
The republic of should preceed the name, or come
after the name. A few cases had minor spelling variations. In all such cases,
the method in which the UN spelled the name was choosen; ISO 3166 claims to
take the names from the UN, so we consider the UN authoritative.
- [1]
- ISO Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA)
http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/index.html.
- [2]
- Country codes,
http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/codlstp1.html, 7
September 1999.
- [3]
- ISO 3166-3, Code for formerly used country names.
http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/info_pt3.html.
- [4]
- United Nations, Statistics Division.
http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/statdiv.htm.
- [5]
- Country or area codes in alphabetical order.
http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49alpha.htm, 26 August
1999.
- [6]
- Codes added or changed.
http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49chang.htm, 26 August
1999.
- [7]
- Geographical regions.
http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49regin.htm, 26 August
1999.
BUGS¶
Looking up information using country names is far from perfect. Except for case
and the amount of white space, the exact name as it appears on the list has to
be given.
USA will not return anything, but
United States will.
DEVELOPMENT¶
The current sources of this module are found on github,
git://github.com/Abigail/geography--countries.git
<
git://github.com/Abigail/geography--countries.git>.
AUTHOR¶
Abigail mailto:geography-countries@abigail.be
<mailto:geography-countries@abigail.be>.
COPYRIGHT and LICENSE¶
Copyright (C) 1999, 2009 by Abigail
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the
rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO
EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR
IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.