Provided by: libgeography-countries-perl_2009041301-2_all bug

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.