NAME

Geo::GNIS - Perl extension for parsing USGS GNIS gazetteer data

SYNOPSIS

  use Geo::GNIS;

  @records = Geo::GNIS->parse_file( $filehandle );
  
  Geo::GNIS->parse_file( $filehandle, \&callback );

  $record = Geo::GNIS->new( \%data );

  $record->fid();
  $record->state();
  $record->name();
  $record->type();
  $record->county();
  $record->coord(); # this is raw DMS
  $record->cell();
  $record->elev();
  $record->est_pop();
  $record->status();

  $record->lat(); # decimal degrees
  $record->lon(); # decimal degrees

DESCRIPTION

Geo::GNIS provides a representation of the US Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information Service (GNIS) gazetteer format. Each object is one record. It also contains methods to parse GNIS Columnar Format data files and turn them into objects.

This is intended as an intermediate format between pulling the raw data out of the simplistic GNIS data files into something more sophisticated (a process you should only have to do once). As such, it's not very fast, but it's careful, easy to use, and performs some verifications on the data being read.

This module subclasses Michael Schwern's very nice Geo::TigerLine modules to do all the heavy lifting.

BUGS, CAVEATS, ETC.

This module wasn't automatically generated like the Geo::TigerLine::Record::* modules were. Probably it should have been, but the GNIS data record layout changes even less often than the TIGER data. If it ever gets revised, I will gladly update this module by hand.

Currently, only the population file format is supported.

SEE ALSO

You can learn all about the Geographic Names Information Service at http://geonames.usgs.gov/. If you decide to download data for the state or topical gazetteers from http://geonames.usgs.gov/stategaz/, be sure to get the so-called Columnar Format Files.

The data dictionary was transcribed from http://geonames.usgs.gov/stategaz/00README.html.

Geo::TigerLine(3pm), Geo::Fips55(3pm)

AUTHOR

Schuyler D. Erle <schuyler@nocat.net>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2005 by Schuyler D. Erle

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.3 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.