Country code via country name

[sn99]

Hi, is there any strong reason for something like this to not exist:

let country = rust_iso3166::from_name("australia");

[zhangjiayin]

Based on the challenges with country names you've highlighted, here's why a direct from_name("australia") approach is problematic and why it's not included in many ISO 3166 libraries:

1. Inconsistent Official Names

Country names in ISO 3166-1 are officially registered in specific formats. For example:
• Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of)

• Lao People's Democratic Republic

• Saint Barthélemy

A naive from_name("Laos") or from_name("North Korea") would fail despite common usage.

2. Diacritics and Special Characters

Names like Côte d'Ivoire or Saint Barthélemy require perfect Unicode handling. from_name("cote divoire") (without accents or spaces) would break without normalization.

3. Multi-Part Names

Entries like Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha contain punctuation and sub-parts that are:
• Ambiguous (e.g., which part is being referenced?)

• Easily misformatted by users (commas omitted, abbreviations like "St.")

4. I18n/L10n Dependencies

A "name" varies by language:
• Germany is Deutschland (DE), Alemania (ES), Allemagne (FR)

• A universal from_name() would require embedding massive localization data, bloating a simple ISO crate.

Practical Alternatives

Instead of from_name(), consider:

A. Use ISO Codes Directly (Recommended)

let country = rust_iso3166::from_alpha2("AU"); // Australia
let country = rust_iso3166::from_alpha3("KOR"); // Korea, Republic of

No ambiguity, no localization issues.

B. Build a Search Layer (Using External Crates)

C. I18n Workflow

For user-facing searches:

1. Use a localization library (fluent, i18n-embed) to get localized country names
2. Map those to ISO codes ahead of time
3. Perform exact/loose matching on the localized dataset

Conclusion

While convenient, from_name() is fundamentally unreliable without:
• Fuzzy matching

• Unicode normalization

• Localization context

• Handling of abbreviations ("DRC" for Congo)

[sn99]

In context of the crate itself, would something like this make sense, we already have ALL_NAME similar to ALL_ALPHA2 (which then has ALPHA2_MAP):

pub const COUNTRY_MAP: MAP<&str, CountryCode> = phf_map!{

"Afganistan" => AF,
}

And maybe even pub const NORMALIZED_COUNTRY_MAP?

Again all this within the context of crate itself and nothing else.

EDIT: something like #18

[zhangjiayin]

Thank you for submitting the PR!​​ I understand your idea, but given the uncertainty in the usage scenarios described above, I don’t consider this implementation a good one. Of course, you can extend it during actual use. Based on the current state, I believe that would be a better choice.