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.

