Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
Hi, A larger version of this idea exists in the iso-codes package, with the iso-code subdivision codes for all countries, see /usr/share/xml/iso-codes/iso_3166-2.xml For each US state it has the 2nd-level code , so US-MI is Michigan, for example. Similar 2nd-level codes exist for each country, so FR-75 is the French Department of Paris, IE-D is Dublin, Ireland, and GB-ESX is the English county of Essex. The iso-codes package provides translations for these lists. Perhaps generalizing this module might be a good idea ? Regards Alastair On 17 Nov 2007, at 18:51, Matt Brown wrote: On 11/17/07, Ron Johnson ron.l.john...@cox.net wrote: This Perl module provides methods allowing United States' two-letter state identification parsing from state code to state name and vice versa. Is a package really needed for something this simple? It might be obvious to a US native, but it's hardly simple or obvious to those of us outside America. MI is a prime example, does it refer to Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi or Minesota? The first two letters match all four. If you come across this every day you probably know the answer, but I just had to look it up again (Michigan) despite being caught out by this just the other week! -- Matt Brown m...@mattb.net.nz Mob +353 86 608 7117 www.mattb.net.nz -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
Two data points for the discussion: (1) The data, and more useful data, is available in iso-codes. The iso-codes-3166-2 list contains the subdivision lists for not just the US but all countries. (In the US, its states, in the Ireland counties, German Lander, etc.), and their translations. (2) Not packaged, but available on the web, is a dataset of the postal formats for all countries. e.g Ireland does not have ZIP codes; different countries have standard formats for addresses. It might be worth packaging this for use with the subdivisions to give more useful web pages for entering addresses. Regards Alastair On 17 Nov 2007, at 18:51, Matt Brown wrote: On 11/17/07, Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This Perl module provides methods allowing United States' two-letter state identification parsing from state code to state name and vice versa. Is a package really needed for something this simple? It might be obvious to a US native, but it's hardly simple or obvious to those of us outside America. MI is a prime example, does it refer to Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi or Minesota? The first two letters match all four. If you come across this every day you probably know the answer, but I just had to look it up again (Michigan) despite being caught out by this just the other week! -- Matt Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mob +353 86 608 7117 www.mattb.net.nz -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Regards, Alastair -- Alastair McKinstry , [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://blog.scealnetworks.com Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist - Kenneth Boulter, Economist. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[OT] Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 04:26:55AM +, Ron Johnson wrote: The USPS doesn't care about entry into the union. It cares about collating and routing. This is true. Until sometime in the twentieth century, states were addressed with more verbose abbreviations (Tex. or Penn., for example), so most, if not all, of the fifty states were present when two-letter abbreviations were assigned. In alphabetical order: Michigan MI first 2 letters of name MinnesotaMN first two non-MI letters of name Mississippi MS first two non-MI letters of name Missouri MO first two non-MS letters of name - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Counterexamples: your state (Louisiana, which is not LO) and mine (Texas, which is not TE, despite Tennessee being TN). Maryland is another, since MR, MY, and ML are not valid region codes for (AFAIK) any region within United States or Canada, and so under that scheme, logically those would have been assigned to Maryland first. A better, but still untested, hypothesis is that precedence was given to pairs of letters that were present in the short abbreviations (so La. became LA, Tenn. became TN, Tex. became TX, and Md. became MD). Hence, Mich., Minn., Miss., and Mo. -- brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US +1 713 440 7475 | http://crustytoothpaste.ath.cx/~bmc | My opinion only a typesetting engine: http://crustytoothpaste.ath.cx/~bmc/code/thwack OpenPGP: RSA v4 4096b 88AC E9B2 9196 305B A994 7552 F1BA 225C 0223 B187 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 11/17/07 09:56, Ernesto Hernandez-Novich wrote: Package: wnpp * Package name: liblocale-us-perl Version: 1.02 Upstream Author: T. M. Brannon [EMAIL PROTECTED] * URL: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Locale-US/ * License: GPL or Perl Artistic Description: This Perl module provides methods allowing United States' two-letter state identification parsing from state code to state name and vice versa. Is a package really needed for something this simple? - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA %SYSTEM-F-FISH, my hovercraft is full of eels -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHPzRAS9HxQb37XmcRAr2aAJ4qlXj4Vb2yzdTbtKTjiNyu33e2OgCfTchc hU/HjV3QuQZO2OmQ44nvxiY= =Otmb -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
On 11/17/07, Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This Perl module provides methods allowing United States' two-letter state identification parsing from state code to state name and vice versa. Is a package really needed for something this simple? It might be obvious to a US native, but it's hardly simple or obvious to those of us outside America. MI is a prime example, does it refer to Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi or Minesota? The first two letters match all four. If you come across this every day you probably know the answer, but I just had to look it up again (Michigan) despite being caught out by this just the other week! -- Matt Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mob +353 86 608 7117 www.mattb.net.nz -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 11/17/07 18:51, Matt Brown wrote: On 11/17/07, Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This Perl module provides methods allowing United States' two-letter state identification parsing from state code to state name and vice versa. Is a package really needed for something this simple? It might be obvious to a US native, but it's hardly simple or obvious to those of us outside America. It's not the *need* for a lookup table, it's the need for such a small package. See below. MI is a prime example, does it refer to Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi or Minesota? The first two letters match all four. Don't forget the Marshall Islands! AL - Alaska or Alabama? AR - Arizona or Arkansas? CO - Colorado or Connecticut? MA - Maine, Marshall Islands, Maryland, Massachusetts? NE - Nebraska or Nevada? If you come across this every day you probably know the answer, but I just had to look it up again (Michigan) despite being caught out by this just the other week! But it's just (or should be) a couple of 65-element (50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and various Pacific islands) hash tables wrapped around a couple of simple functions. http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/abbr_state.txt What would be much more useful (still simple, but with much more data) is a world-wide hash table of countries and states/provinces. And wouldn't you know it... there's already a CPAN module to do just that: Locale::SubCountry. http://search.cpan.org/~kimryan/Locale-SubCountry-1.38/lib/Locale/SubCountry.pm - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA %SYSTEM-F-FISH, my hovercraft is full of eels -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHP0R8S9HxQb37XmcRAiA2AJ9yhYepslZJCedRRxeLtverXuP2RQCggl/G jffLA1E9WM2wK00R4LZehYw= =UNmC -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
On Sat, Nov 17, 2007 at 06:51:03PM +, Matt Brown wrote: On 11/17/07, Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This Perl module provides methods allowing United States' two-letter state identification parsing from state code to state name and vice versa. Is a package really needed for something this simple? It might be obvious to a US native, but it's hardly simple or obvious to those of us outside America. MI is a prime example, does it refer to Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi or Minesota? The first two letters match all four. If you come across this every day you probably know the answer, but I just had to look it up again (Michigan) despite being caught out by this just the other week! That got me thinking. I figure that since MI - Michigan, it meant that MI was the first state to start with those letters. Logically, I would think, always use the first two letters, unless another state already had them. Arbitrate in order granting of statehood. But both Mississippi (MS) and Missouri (MO) were states before Michigan (MI). Curious. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
I demand that Ron Johnson may or may not have written... [snip] What would be much more useful (still simple, but with much more data) is a world-wide hash table of countries and states/provinces. Are you equating states with provinces there? If so, think again... :-) [snip] -- | Darren Salt| linux or ds at | nr. Ashington, | Toon | RISC OS, Linux | youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army | + Travel less. Share transport more. PRODUCE LESS CARBON DIOXIDE. You will pass away very quickly. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 11/17/07 20:33, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote: On Sat, Nov 17, 2007 at 06:51:03PM +, Matt Brown wrote: On 11/17/07, Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This Perl module provides methods allowing United States' two-letter state identification parsing from state code to state name and vice versa. Is a package really needed for something this simple? It might be obvious to a US native, but it's hardly simple or obvious to those of us outside America. MI is a prime example, does it refer to Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi or Minesota? The first two letters match all four. If you come across this every day you probably know the answer, but I just had to look it up again (Michigan) despite being caught out by this just the other week! That got me thinking. I figure that since MI - Michigan, it meant that MI was the first state to start with those letters. Logically, I would think, always use the first two letters, unless another state already had them. Arbitrate in order granting of statehood. But both Mississippi (MS) and Missouri (MO) were states before Michigan (MI). The USPS doesn't care about entry into the union. It cares about collating and routing. In alphabetical order: Michigan MI first 2 letters of name MinnesotaMN first two non-MI letters of name Mississippi MS first two non-MI letters of name Missouri MO first two non-MS letters of name - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA %SYSTEM-F-FISH, my hovercraft is full of eels -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHP78PS9HxQb37XmcRAhoAAJ9EdjvARhzDuFf6SIPrZlsK8zvh8wCg65/o 6nU3UhDAJz/QO1KQaTzwOlY= =kZoB -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ITP: liblocale-us-perl -- Module for United States state identification
On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 04:26:55AM +, Ron Johnson wrote: On 11/17/07 20:33, Roberto C. S�nchez wrote: That got me thinking. I figure that since MI - Michigan, it meant that MI was the first state to start with those letters. Logically, I would think, always use the first two letters, unless another state already had them. Arbitrate in order granting of statehood. But both Mississippi (MS) and Missouri (MO) were states before Michigan (MI). The USPS doesn't care about entry into the union. It cares about collating and routing. In alphabetical order: Michigan MI first 2 letters of name MinnesotaMN first two non-MI letters of name Mississippi MS first two non-MI letters of name Missouri MO first two non-MS letters of name Interesting. I had not considered that. -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com signature.asc Description: Digital signature
