Talk:ISO 3166-1

Some people are removing mentions of ISO 3166-1 codes in articles like Western Sahara and Canary Islands. I think that they should be mentioned for territories with a code but no top Internet domain. What do you think? -- Error 00:42 22 May 2003 (UTC)

They have been removed from everywhere (not by me, as it happens), those two were just some leftovers that the other people cleaning them up accidently missed. I can't see any point in mentioning them at all. Who on earth would want to know that stuff? There is an entry right here on ISO 3166-1 codes (and an excellent entry it is too) but messing up perfectly good and readable articles about particular countries with a whole jumble of meaningless letters and numbers makes no sense at all. If you think it's important that they be mentioned (I have no idea why anyone would think that, but - hey - different strrokes for different folks) then there is an obvious and useful place to put them where they will be easy for anyone to find: ISO 3166-1. Tannin 01:05 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Hey Tannin, do you think you are the wisdom on earth? Or why are you talking so arrogant? Tobias Conradi

Oh, I forgot to mention: I don't think there are any left as incomprehensible intrusions into the opening line in the various countries entries now, but if there, let me know, and I'll volunteer my time to cleam them up right away. Tannin

Just curious, but why was the "DD blabla" removed? It is valid information.

ISO 3166-1:DD was asigned to the former German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany, but is currently no longer in use.

-- EmperorBMA / ブリイアン 08:50, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It was removed because it was in the wrong place. There are lots of these obsolete codes, and they listed in the ISO 3166-3 article. --Zundark 09:35, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ah I see then. ^_^;; -- EmperorBMA / ブリイアン 19:53, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Converted to table

Uniform data like ISO 3166 codes ought to be in tabular form, so I converted the page to a table. Not by hand, mind you:

// File:    convert-iso3166-1.cpp
// License: Public domain
// Author:  Ardonik
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main() {
  ifstream infile("iso3166-1.txt");
  ofstream outfile("iso3166-1.table.txt");
 
  if (infile && outfile) {
    outfile << "{| border=\"1px\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2px\"\n";
    outfile << "|- style=\"background-color: #a0d0ff;\"\n";
    outfile << "!Numeric!!Alpha-3!!Alpha-2!!Local ISO codes!!Country\n";
    outfile << "|-\n";
   
    while (infile) {
      string line;
      getline(infile, line);
      if (line == "") break;
      string numeric = line.substr(1, 3);
      string code3 = line.substr(5, 3);
      string code2 = line.substr(9, 2);
      size_t pos = line.find("]]", 12);
      string iso_link = line.substr(12, (pos - 12) + 2);
      string country_link = line.substr(pos + 3);
      outfile << "|" << numeric << "||" << code3 << "||" << code2 << "||" 
              << iso_link << "||" << country_link << "\n";
      outfile << "|-\n";
    }
    outfile << "|}" << endl;
  } else   
    cout << "Couldn't open files?" << endl;
  return 0;
}

To use the program, you have to copy the ISO data from the old version of the page into a file called "iso3166-1.txt". Running the program will then give you the equivalent table. --Ardonik 23:18, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

Country

I changed the column heading from coutry to coutry / region since not all the entities in the column are universally recognized countries (Taiwan, Palestinian Territories) and we shouldn't confer on them coutry status. 67.86.150.45 14:01, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)