There is no shortage of codes for countries. In my programming, I usually use the 3-letter codes of the International Olympic Committee, since what I write is generally sports-related. But for this purpose, being able to match codes with the CLDR is the most important criterion (other than backward compatibility), and that argues for ISO 2-letter. J Andrew Lipscomb, CPA*ABV, ASA Decosimo Corporate Finance 900 Tallan Building 2 Union Square Chattanooga, TN 37402 423.756.7100 Fax 423.266.6671 www.dcf.decosimo.com -----Original Message----- From: Oscar van Vlijmen [mailto:ovv@hetnet.nl] Sent: Mon 27 November 2006 14:21 To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Suggestions about separation and ISO code
From: Jonas Melian Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 6:21 AM To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Suggestions about separation and ISO code
1) To using ISO 3166 3-character country code becasuse is more readable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1
For any person it's easier to identify a country by the code of 3-letters that by the one of 2-letters.
Internet top level domain names for countries are 2-letter codes, derived from the ISO list. More people know something about the internet country codes than about 3-letter ISO codes. More or less related are the US Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 10-4 codes, also 2-letter codes.