bionic (3) Geography::Countries.3pm.gz
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.