----- Original Message ----- From: "bruno b b magalhães" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "MySQL List" <mysql@lists.mysql.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 10:15 AM
Subject: Country codes


Hi guys,

I know it's a little bit off-topic, but does some one have a list with all countries of the world and their respective ISO codes (Like BRA, US, UK, etc.) and also their international calling codes (Like +55, +1, +32)?

The ISO standard that governs country codes is ISO-3166. The standard includes various abbreviations for each country, including two letter and three letter abbreviations, called the Alpha-2 Code and Alpha-3 code respectively. I *think* the Alpha-2 code is the preferred abbreviation. You can see a complete list of the Alpha-2 codes at:
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html

I don't see the Alpha-3 codes at the ISO site but I may just have missed them. Look for yourself and you may find them. Or Google on ISO-3166 and you may find a list that shows Alpha-2 and Alpha-3 codes in the same list.

With respect to telephone country codes, I *think* the relevant internation standard is called E.164, administered by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). I found an English language PDF showing the country codes for telephones at http://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/ob-lists/icc/e164_763.pdf. The same list is available in other languages and formats at http://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/ob-lists/icc/e164_763.html.

The lists are current as of May 1, 2005 and presumably reflect the current situation with respect to countries and telephones.

Be careful when reading those lists! When I looked at page 3 in the English PDF, it said it was in numeric order and the list showed all the countries that use country code 1, then country 20 (Egypt), then country 210 (spare) *without* showing 55 (Brazil). Page 6 shows countries 500 through 509, then 51 through 58, and so on. Therefore, Brazil doesn't appear until Page 6. They have obviously chosen to sort the list only on the FIRST DIGIT of the country code; that's a pretty odd form of numerical order, in my opinion!

Also, if you do a Google search on "telephone country codes", you should get plenty of hits that show essentially the same information: I got 14,600,000! The problem with any of those lists is that it will be difficult to tell if they are up-to-date; of the handful of those pages which I checked, none of them indicated when they were last updated.

With respect to both the ISO country codes and the ITU telephone codes, you should make sure you update any lookup tables for these values regularly. New countries emerge - or old countries change their names - from time to time and those geopolitical changes will change either or both tables too. For instance, when Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, both tables must have changed and when Zaire changed it's name back to the Congo, the tables must have changed again.

Rhino




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