Country codes (was: Re: Private Use Area)

Kevin Brown <graphity at adelaide dot on dot net> wrote:

> This is slightly off-topic but I just noticed when researching
> language and country codes that the latest official ISO-3166 Country
> Code listing (www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/
> 02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html) has got 239 country codes  - 4
> less than the current number of TLD country codes (243) listed at
> EuroDNS (http://www.eurodns.org/info/country_code.php).
>
> Does anyone know how these two lists could be out of sync?

The ISO 3166-based ccTLD (Country Code Top-Level Domain) system uses
some "exceptionally reserved" code elements from ISO 3166-1, such as
"ac" for Ascension Island and "je" for Jersey.  These codes don't
represent "countries" in the view of the United Nations (and hence the
ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency), but are reserved "to aid major users who
require specific additional code elements for the functioning of their
coding systems."  That should account for the difference between the two
lists.

The ccTLD system also uses the exceptionally reserved code element "uk"
to represent the United Kingdom instead of the ISO 3166-1 standard "gb".
One way to tell whether you are looking at an ISO 3166-1 country code
list or a ccTLD list (the latter is often misidentified as the former on
the Internet) is to see which of these two codes is used for the United
Kingdom.

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California
 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/