str_isgeo

Define if a (list of) string(s) can be the ISO-code of a country (e.g., BE, AT, BG,...) or a geographic area (e.g., EU28, EA19, ...), and update this list with geographic areas/countries only.

%str_isgeo(geo, _ans_=, _geo_=, cds_ctryxzone=META_COUNTRYxZONE, clib=LIBCFG, sep=%quote( ));

Arguments

• geo : a list of string(s) which shall represent(s) and ISO-code or a geographical zone;
• cds_ctryxzone : (option) configuration file storing the description of geographical areas; by default, it is named after the value &G_PING_COUNTRYxZONE (e.g., META_COUNTRYxZONE); for further description, see %meta_countryxzone;
• clib : (option) name of the library where the configuration file is stored; default to the value &G_PING_LIBCFG(e.g., LIBCFG) when not set;
• sep : (option) character/string separator in input geo list; default: %quote( ), i.e. sep is blank.

Returns

• _ans_ : (option) name of the macro variable storing the list of same length as geo where the i-th item provides the answer of the test above for the i-th item in geo, i.e.:
  • 1 if it is the ISO-code of a country (e.g., geo=DE, geo=CH, geo=TR, ...),
  • 2 if it is the code/acronym of a geographic area (e.g., geo=EU28, or geo=EFTA,..),
  • 0 otherwise; either this option or the next one (_geo_) must be set so as to run the macro;
• _geo_ : (option) name of the macro variable storing the updated list from which all non-geographical areas or countries have been removed; _geo_ stores, in this order, first countries, then geographical zones.

Examples

Let us consider the following simple example:

%let ans=;
%let geo=;
%str_isgeo(AT BE DUMMY EU28 FR EA19, _ans_=ans, _geo_=geo);

which returns ans=1 1 0 2 1 2 and geo=AT BE FR EU28 EA19.

Run macro %_example_str_isgeo for more examples.

Note

Testing all at once if a list geo of strings are actual geographic codes (instead of testing it separately for each item of the list) avoids the burden of multiple IO operations on the input cds_ctryxzone configuration dataset.

References

1. Official Journal of the European Union, no. L 328, 28.11.2012.
2. Eurostat Statistics Explained webpage on protocol order and country code.

See also

%zone_to_ctry, %ctry_to_zone, %ctry_in_zone, %meta_countryxzone.