NAME

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

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS

Linux
Solaris
Windows

This module is not included with the standard ActivePerl distribution. It is available as a separate download using PPM.

SYNOPSIS

    use Locale::Country;


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


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


    Locale::Country::_alias_code('uk' => 'gb');  # allow "uk": United Kingdom

DESCRIPTION

The Locale::Country module provides access to the ISO two-letter codes for identifying countries, as defined in ISO 3166. 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.

CONVERSION ROUTINES

There are two conversion routines: code2country() and country2code().

code2country()

This function takes a two letter 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()

This function takes a country name and returns the corresponding two letter country code, if such exists. If the argument could not be identified as a country name, then undef will be returned:

    $code = country2code('Norway');

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

QUERY ROUTINES

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

all_country_codes(): 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(): Returns a list of all country names for which there is a corresponding two-letter country code. The names are capitalised, and not returned in any particular order.

CODE ALIASING

This module supports a semi-private routine for specifying two letter code aliases. 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:

    use Locale::Country;


    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''.

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);
    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. For example,
```
    country2code('United States')
```
will return us, as expected. But the following will all return undef:
```
    country2code('United States of America')
    country2code('Great Britain')
    country2code('U.S.A.')
```
If there's need for it, a future version could have variants for country names.
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.

AUTHOR

Neil Bowers <neilb@cre.canon.co.uk>

COPYRIGHT

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

Locale::Country - ISO two letter codes for country identification