Geography::Countries(3User Contributed Perl DocumentatiGeography::Countries(3)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.
perl v5.12.5 2009-04-13 Geography::Countries(3)