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