


Locale::Country(3Perl Programmers Reference GuLocale::Country(3p)


NAME
       Locale::Country - ISO codes for country identification
       (ISO 3166)

SYNOPSIS
           use Locale::Country;

           $country = code2country('jp');        # $country gets 'Japan'
           $code    = country2code('Norway');    # $code gets 'no'

           @codes   = all_country_codes();
           @names   = all_country_names();

           # semi-private routines
           Locale::Country::alias_code('uk' => 'gb');
           Locale::Country::rename_country('gb' => 'Great Britain');

DESCRIPTION
       The "Locale::Country" module provides access to the ISO
       codes for identifying countries, as defined in ISO 3166-1.
       You can either access the codes via the "conversion
       routines" (described below), or with the two functions
       which return lists of all country codes or all country
       names.

       There are three different code sets you can use for
       identifying countries:

       alpha-2
           Two letter codes, such as 'tv' for Tuvalu.  This code
           set is identified with the symbol
           "LOCALE_CODE_ALPHA_2".

       alpha-3
           Three letter codes, such as 'brb' for Barbados.  This
           code set is identified with the symbol
           "LOCALE_CODE_ALPHA_3".

       numeric
           Numeric codes, such as 064 for Bhutan.  This code set
           is identified with the symbol "LOCALE_CODE_NUMERIC".

       All of the routines take an optional additional argument
       which specifies the code set to use.  If not specified, it
       defaults to the two-letter codes.  This is partly for
       backwards compatibility (previous versions of this module
       only supported the alpha-2 codes), and partly because they
       are the most widely used codes.

       The alpha-2 and alpha-3 codes are not case-dependent, so
       you can use 'BO', 'Bo', 'bO' or 'bo' for Bolivia.  When a
       code is returned by one of the functions in this module,
       it will always be lower-case.




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Locale::Country(3Perl Programmers Reference GuLocale::Country(3p)


       As of version 2.00, Locale::Country supports variant names
       for countries. So, for example, the country code for
       "United States" is "us", so country2code('United States')
       returns 'us'.  Now the following will also return 'us':

           country2code('United States of America')
           country2code('USA')

CONVERSION ROUTINES
       There are three conversion routines: "code2country()",
       "country2code()", and "country_code2code()".

       code2country( CODE, [ CODESET ] )
           This function takes a country code and returns a
           string which contains the name of the country
           identified.  If the code is not a valid country code,
           as defined by ISO 3166, then "undef" will be returned:

               $country = code2country('fi');

       country2code( STRING, [ CODESET ] )
           This function takes a country name and returns the
           corresponding country code, if such exists.  If the
           argument could not be identified as a country name,
           then "undef" will be returned:

               $code = country2code('Norway', LOCALE_CODE_ALPHA_3);
               # $code will now be 'nor'

           The case of the country name is not important.  See
           the section "KNOWN BUGS AND LIMITATIONS" below.

       country_code2code( CODE, CODESET, CODESET )
           This function takes a country code from one code set,
           and returns the corresponding code from another code
           set.

               $alpha2 = country_code2code('fin',
                            LOCALE_CODE_ALPHA_3, LOCALE_CODE_ALPHA_2);
               # $alpha2 will now be 'fi'

           If the code passed is not a valid country code in the
           first code set, or if there isn't a code for the
           corresponding country in the second code set, then
           "undef" will be returned.

QUERY ROUTINES
       There are two function which can be used to obtain a list
       of all codes, or all country names:

       "all_country_codes( [ CODESET ] )"
           Returns a list of all two-letter country codes.  The
           codes are guaranteed to be all lower-case, and not in
           any particular order.



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Locale::Country(3Perl Programmers Reference GuLocale::Country(3p)


       "all_country_names( [ CODESET ] )"
           Returns a list of all country names for which there is
           a corresponding country code in the specified code
           set.  The names are capitalised, and not returned in
           any particular order.

           Not all countries have alpha-3 and numeric codes -
           some just have an alpha-2 code, so you'll get a
           different number of countries depending on which code
           set you specify.

SEMI-PRIVATE ROUTINES
       Locale::Country provides two semi-private routines for
       modifying the internal data.  Given their status, they
       aren't exported by default, and so need to be called by
       prefixing the function name with the package name.

   alias_code
       Define a new code as an alias for an existing code:

           Locale::Country::alias_code( ALIAS => CODE [, CODESET ] )

       This feature was added as a mechanism for handling a "uk"
       code. The ISO standard says that the two-letter code for
       "United Kingdom" is "gb", whereas domain names are all
       .uk.

       By default the module does not understand "uk", since it
       is implementing an ISO standard. If you would like 'uk' to
       work as the two-letter code for United Kingdom, use the
       following:

           Locale::Country::alias_code('uk' => 'gb');

       With this code, both "uk" and "gb" are valid codes for
       United Kingdom, with the reverse lookup returning "uk"
       rather than the usual "gb".

       Note: this function was previously called _alias_code, but
       the leading underscore has been dropped.  The old name
       will be supported for all 2.X releases for backwards
       compatibility.

   rename_country
       If the official country name just isn't good enough for
       you, you can rename a country. For example, the official
       country name for code 'gb' is 'United Kingdom'.  If you
       want to change that, you might call:

           Locale::Country::rename_country('gb' => 'Great Britain');

       This means that calling code2country('gb') will now return
       'Great Britain' instead of 'United Kingdom'.  The original
       country name is retained as an alias, so for the above



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Locale::Country(3Perl Programmers Reference GuLocale::Country(3p)


       example, country2code('United Kingdom') will still return
       'gb'.

EXAMPLES
       The following example illustrates use of the
       "code2country()" function.  The user is prompted for a
       country code, and then told the corresponding country
       name:

           $| = 1;   # turn off buffering

           print "Enter country code: ";
           chop($code = <STDIN>);
           $country = code2country($code, LOCALE_CODE_ALPHA_2);
           if (defined $country)
           {
               print "$code = $country\n";
           }
           else
           {
               print "'$code' is not a valid country code!\n";
           }

DOMAIN NAMES
       Most top-level domain names are based on these codes, but
       there are certain codes which aren't.  If you are using
       this module to identify country from hostname, your best
       bet is to preprocess the country code.

       For example, edu, com, gov and friends would map to us; uk
       would map to gb. Any others?

KNOWN BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
       o   When using "country2code()", the country name must
           currently appear exactly as it does in the source of
           the module. The module now supports a small number of
           variants.

           Possible extensions to this are: an interface for
           getting at the list of variant names, and regular
           expression matches.

       o   In the current implementation, all data is read in
           when the module is loaded, and then held in memory.  A
           lazy implementation would be more memory friendly.

       o   Support for country names in different languages.

SEE ALSO
       Locale::Language
           ISO two letter codes for identification of language
           (ISO 639).





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Locale::Country(3Perl Programmers Reference GuLocale::Country(3p)


       Locale::Script
           ISO codes for identification of scripts (ISO 15924).

       Locale::Currency
           ISO three letter codes for identification of
           currencies and funds (ISO 4217).

       Locale::SubCountry
           ISO codes for country sub-divisions (states, counties,
           provinces, etc), as defined in ISO 3166-2.  This
           module is not part of the Locale-Codes distribution,
           but is available from CPAN in
           CPAN/modules/by-module/Locale/

       ISO 3166-1
           The ISO standard which defines these codes.

       http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/index.html
           Official home page for the ISO 3166 maintenance
           agency.

       http://www.egt.ie/standards/iso3166/iso3166-1-en.html
           Another useful, but not official, home page.

       http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/docs/app-d-1.html
           An appendix in the CIA world fact book which lists
           country codes as defined by ISO 3166, FIPS 10-4, and
           internet domain names.

AUTHOR
       Neil Bowers <neil@bowers.com>

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 2002-2004, Neil Bowers.

       Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Canon Research Centre Europe
       (CRE).

       This module is free software; you can redistribute it
       and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

















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