Geography::Countries(3pm)				User Contributed Perl Documentation				 Geography::Countries(3pm)

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>.

AUTHOR

       Abigail <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 v5.10.1							    2010-12-17						 Geography::Countries(3pm)