Locale::Country
Locale::Country(3) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Locale::Country(3)
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 iden-
tifying 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 coun-
tries:
alpha-2
Two letter codes, such as 'tv' for Tuvalu. This code set is iden-
tified 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 speci-
fies 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.
As of version 2.00, Locale::Country supports variant names for coun-
tries. 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()", "coun-
try2code()", and "country_code2code()".
code2country( CODE, [ CODESET ] )
This function takes a country code and returns a string which con-
tains 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 identi-
fied 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.
"all_country_names( [ CODESET ] )"
Returns a list of all country names for which there is a corre-
sponding 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 pack-
age 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 implement-
ing 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 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 correspond-
ing 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 sup-
ports 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).
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/mod-
ules/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.
perl v5.8.6 2001-09-21 Locale::Country(3)
