Re: Modules dealing with data files

[jgamble]

I have written a module that deals with France's INSEE codes, which allows one to look up postcodes and stuff like that. I've been toying with Geography::FR::Postcode as a name. (any other ideas?)

May I recommend the Geo::Postcodes base class for your module? Then your module would presumably be Geo::Postcodes::FR.

[grinder]

I looked at that briefly, but dismissed it as being too americanocentric. The notions of borough_of and county_of either have no counterpart in France, or if they do, in any case, I don't know which one is subordinate to the other, so I wouldn't know what to map to what. And thus I doubt that a French person does either.

Conversely, I doubt an American knows how communes, régions and departements relate to each other.

If this module were truly generic, it would have defined an abstract hierarchy of nested geographic concepts, to which country-specific labels could be attached.

Finally, I find the Geo namespace somewhat ambiguous, since it is not clear whether we are talking about geography or geology.

[Errto]

but dismissed it as being too americanocentric

Doubtful. I won't deny that there's an awful lot of, as you say, americanocentric, stuff on the Internet, but I don't buy that this counts, especially given that the author is (as best I can tell) in Norway. Also, in the US, "borough" is not a widespread concept. Only a few states use that term, and they use it for different things: in NY it's a subdivision of a city, in CT it's an incorporated community within a larger Town, and in AK it's basically equivalent to a county.