1Geography::Countries(3)User Contributed Perl DocumentatioGneography::Countries(3)
2
6 Geography::Countries - 2-letter, 3-letter, and numerical codes for
7 countries.
8
10 use Geography::Countries;
11 $country = country 'DE'; # 'Germany'
13 @list = country 666; # ('PM', 'SPM', 666,
14 # 'Saint Pierre and Miquelon', 1)
15
17 This module maps country names, and their 2-letter, 3-letter and
18 numerical codes, as defined by the ISO-3166 maintenance agency [1], and
19 defined by the UNSD.
20 The "country" subroutine.
22 This subroutine is exported by default. It takes a 2-letter, 3-letter
23 or numerical code, or a country name as argument. In scalar context, it
24 will return the country name, in list context, it will return a list
25 consisting of the 2-letter code, the 3-letter code, the numerical code,
26 the country name, and a flag, which is explained below. Note that not
27 all countries have all 3 codes; if a code is unknown, the undefined
28 value is returned.
29 There are 3 categories of countries. The largest category are the
31 current countries. Then there is a small set of countries that no
32 longer exist. The final set consists of areas consisting of multiple
33 countries, like Africa. No 2-letter or 3-letter codes are available for
34 the second two sets. (ISO 3166-3 [3] defines 4 letter codes for the set
35 of countries that no longer exist, but the author of this module was
36 unable to get her hands on that standard.) By default, "country" only
37 returns countries from the first set, but this can be changed by giving
38 "country" an optional second argument.
39 The module optionally exports the constants "CNT_F_REGULAR",
41 "CNT_F_OLD", "CNT_F_REGION" and "CNT_F_ANY". These constants can also
42 be important all at once by using the tag ":FLAGS". "CNT_F_ANY" is just
43 the binary or of the three other flags. The second argument of
44 "country" should be the binary or of a subset of the flags
45 "CNT_F_REGULAR", "CNT_F_OLD", and "CNT_F_REGION" - if no, or a false,
46 second argument is given, "CNT_F_REGULAR" is assumed. If
47 "CNT_F_REGULAR" is set, regular (current) countries will be returned;
48 if "CNT_F_OLD" is set, old, no longer existing, countries will be
49 returned, while "CNT_F_REGION" is used in case a region (not
50 necessarely) a country might be returned. If "country" is used in list
51 context, the fifth returned element is one of "CNT_F_REGULAR",
52 "CNT_F_OLD" and "CNT_F_REGION", indicating whether the result is a
53 regular country, an old country, or a region.
54 In list context, "country" returns a 5 element list. To avoid having to
56 remember which element is in which index, the constants "CNT_I_CODE2",
57 "CNT_I_CODE3", "CNT_I_NUMCODE", "CNT_I_COUNTRY" and "CNT_I_FLAG" can be
58 imported. Those constants contain the indices of the 2-letter code, the
59 3-letter code, the numerical code, the country, and the flag explained
60 above, respectively. All index constants can be imported by using the
61 ":INDICES" tag.
62 The "code2", "code3", "numcode" and "countries" routines.
64 All known 2-letter codes, 3-letter codes, numerical codes and country
65 names can be returned by the routines "code2", "code3", "numcode" and
66 "countries". None of these methods is exported by default; all need to
67 be imported if one wants to use them. The tag ":LISTS" imports them
68 all. In scalar context, the number of known codes or countries is
69 returned.
70
72 The 2-letter codes come from the ISO 3166-1:1997 standard [2]. ISO 3166
73 bases its list of country names on the list of names published by the
74 United Nations. This list is published by the Statistical Division of
75 the United Nations [4]. The UNSD uses 3-letter codes, and numerical
76 codes [5]. The information about old countries [6] and regions [7] also
77 comes from the United Nations.
78 In a few cases, there was a conflict between the way how the United
80 Nations spelled a name, and how ISO 3166 spells it. In most cases, is
81 was word order (for instance whether The republic of should preceed the
82 name, or come after the name. A few cases had minor spelling
83 variations. In all such cases, the method in which the UN spelled the
84 name was choosen; ISO 3166 claims to take the names from the UN, so we
85 consider the UN authoritative.
86 [1] ISO Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA)
88 http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/index.html.
89 [2] Country codes,
91 http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/codlstp1.html, 7
92 September 1999.
93 [3] ISO 3166-3, Code for formerly used country names.
95 http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/info_pt3.html.
96 [4] United Nations, Statistics Division.
98 http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/statdiv.htm.
99 [5] Country or area codes in alphabetical order.
101 http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49alpha.htm, 26 August 1999.
102 [6] Codes added or changed.
104 http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49chang.htm, 26 August 1999.
105 [7] Geographical regions.
107 http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49regin.htm, 26 August 1999.
108
110 Looking up information using country names is far from perfect. Except
111 for case and the amount of white space, the exact name as it appears on
112 the list has to be given. USA will not return anything, but United
113 States will.
114
116 The current sources of this module are found on github,
117 <git://github.com/Abigail/geography--countries.git>.
118
120 Abigail <mailto:geography-countries@abigail.be>.
121
123 Copyright (C) 1999, 2009 by Abigail
124 Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
126 copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
127 "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
128 without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
129 distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
130 permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
131 the following conditions:
132 The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
134 in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
135 THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
137 OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
138 MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
139 IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
140 LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
141 FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
142 DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
143perl v5.28.0 2009-04-13 Geography::Countries(3)