1NAME
2 Geography::Countries - 2-letter, 3-letter, and numerical codes for
3 countries.
4
5SYNOPSIS
6 use Geography::Countries;
7
8 $country = country 'DE'; # 'Germany'
9 @list = country 666; # ('PM', 'SPM', 666,
10 # 'Saint Pierre and Miquelon', 1)
11
12DESCRIPTION
13 This module maps country names, and their 2-letter, 3-letter and
14 numerical codes, as defined by the ISO-3166 maintenance agency [1], and
15 defined by the UNSD.
16
17 The "country" subroutine.
18 This subroutine is exported by default. It takes a 2-letter, 3-letter or
19 numerical code, or a country name as argument. In scalar context, it
20 will return the country name, in list context, it will return a list
21 consisting of the 2-letter code, the 3-letter code, the numerical code,
22 the country name, and a flag, which is explained below. Note that not
23 all countries have all 3 codes; if a code is unknown, the undefined
24 value is returned.
25
26 There are 3 categories of countries. The largest category are the
27 current countries. Then there is a small set of countries that no longer
28 exist. The final set consists of areas consisting of multiple countries,
29 like *Africa*. No 2-letter or 3-letter codes are available for the
30 second two sets. (ISO 3166-3 [3] defines 4 letter codes for the set of
31 countries that no longer exist, but the author of this module was unable
32 to get her hands on that standard.) By default, "country" only returns
33 countries from the first set, but this can be changed by giving
34 "country" an optional second argument.
35
36 The module optionally exports the constants "CNT_F_REGULAR",
37 "CNT_F_OLD", "CNT_F_REGION" and "CNT_F_ANY". These constants can also be
38 important all at once by using the tag ":FLAGS". "CNT_F_ANY" is just the
39 binary or of the three other flags. The second argument of "country"
40 should be the binary or of a subset of the flags "CNT_F_REGULAR",
41 "CNT_F_OLD", and "CNT_F_REGION" - if no, or a false, second argument is
42 given, "CNT_F_REGULAR" is assumed. If "CNT_F_REGULAR" is set, regular
43 (current) countries will be returned; if "CNT_F_OLD" is set, old, no
44 longer existing, countries will be returned, while "CNT_F_REGION" is
45 used in case a region (not necessarely) a country might be returned. If
46 "country" is used in list context, the fifth returned element is one of
47 "CNT_F_REGULAR", "CNT_F_OLD" and "CNT_F_REGION", indicating whether the
48 result is a regular country, an old country, or a region.
49
50 In list context, "country" returns a 5 element list. To avoid having to
51 remember which element is in which index, the constants "CNT_I_CODE2",
52 "CNT_I_CODE3", "CNT_I_NUMCODE", "CNT_I_COUNTRY" and "CNT_I_FLAG" can be
53 imported. Those constants contain the indices of the 2-letter code, the
54 3-letter code, the numerical code, the country, and the flag explained
55 above, respectively. All index constants can be imported by using the
56 ":INDICES" tag.
57
58 The "code2", "code3", "numcode" and "countries" routines.
59 All known 2-letter codes, 3-letter codes, numerical codes and country
60 names can be returned by the routines "code2", "code3", "numcode" and
61 "countries". None of these methods is exported by default; all need to
62 be imported if one wants to use them. The tag ":LISTS" imports them all.
63 In scalar context, the number of known codes or countries is returned.
64
65REFERENCES
66 The 2-letter codes come from the ISO 3166-1:1997 standard [2]. ISO 3166
67 bases its list of country names on the list of names published by the
68 United Nations. This list is published by the Statistical Division of
69 the United Nations [4]. The UNSD uses 3-letter codes, and numerical
70 codes [5]. The information about old countries [6] and regions [7] also
71 comes from the United Nations.
72
73 In a few cases, there was a conflict between the way how the United
74 Nations spelled a name, and how ISO 3166 spells it. In most cases, is
75 was word order (for instance whether *The republic of* should preceed
76 the name, or come after the name. A few cases had minor spelling
77 variations. In all such cases, the method in which the UN spelled the
78 name was choosen; ISO 3166 claims to take the names from the UN, so we
79 consider the UN authoritative.
80
81 [1] ISO Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA)
82 *http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/index.html*.
83
84 [2] *Country codes*,
85 *http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/codlstp1.html*, 7
86 September 1999.
87
88 [3] ISO 3166-3, *Code for formerly used country names*.
89 *http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/info_pt3.html*.
90
91 [4] United Nations, Statistics Division.
92 *http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/statdiv.htm*.
93
94 [5] *Country or area codes in alphabetical order*.
95 *http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49alpha.htm*, 26 August 1999.
96
97 [6] *Codes added or changed*.
98 *http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49chang.htm*, 26 August 1999.
99
100 [7] *Geographical regions*.
101 *http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49regin.htm*, 26 August 1999.
102
103BUGS
104 Looking up information using country names is far from perfect. Except
105 for case and the amount of white space, the exact name as it appears on
106 the list has to be given. *USA* will not return anything, but *United
107 States* will.
108
109DEVELOPMENT
110 The current sources of this module are found on github,
111 <git://github.com/Abigail/geography--countries.git>.
112
113AUTHOR
114 Abigail <mailto:geography-countries@abigail.be>.
115
116COPYRIGHT and LICENSE
117 Copyright (C) 1999, 2009 by Abigail
118
119 Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
120 copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
121 "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
122 without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
123 distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
124 permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
125 the following conditions:
126
127 The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
128 in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
129
130 THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
131 OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
132 MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
133 IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
134 LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
135 FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
136 DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
137
138