Locale::Country(3Perl Programmers Reference GuLocale::Country(3p)NAMELocale::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 rou-
tines" (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 identi-
fying 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 back-
wards 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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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 argu-
ment 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
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Locale::Country(3Perl Programmers Reference GuLocale::Country(3p)
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
corresponding country code in the specified code set.
The names are capitalised, and not returned in any par-
ticular 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 modi-
fying 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 follow-
ing:
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 compatibil-
ity.
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:
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Locale::Country(3Perl Programmers Reference GuLocale::Country(3p)
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 exam-
ple, country2code('United Kingdom') will still return 'gb'.
EXAMPLES
The following example illustrates use of the
"code2country()" function. The user is prompted for a coun-
try 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
+ 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 vari-
ants.
Possible extensions to this are: an interface for get-
ting at the list of variant names, and regular expres-
sion matches.
+ 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.
+ Support for country names in different languages.
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Locale::Country(3Perl Programmers Reference GuLocale::Country(3p)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/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 coun-
try codes as defined by ISO 3166, FIPS 10-4, and inter-
net 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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