The countries dataset corresponds to the ISO 3166-1 sub-standard, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states). The ISO 3166-1 sub-standard defines three sets of country codes, all provided in the dataset:
alpha-2: two-letter country codes (most widely used).
alpha-3: three-letter country codes. Allows for a better visual association between the codes and the country names than the alpha-2 codes.
numeric: three-digit country codes. These are identical to those developed and maintained by the United Nations Statistics Division, with the advantage of script (writing system) independence, and hence useful for people or systems using non-Latin scripts.
countries
A data.table with columns:
name: country name. From United Nations sources (Terminology Bulletin Country Names and the Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use maintained by the United Nations Statistics Divisions).
alpha 2: ISO 3166-1 two-letter alphabetic code.
alpha 3: ISO 3166-1 three-letter alphabetic code.
numeric: ISO 3166-1 three-digit numeric code.
capital: country's capital city.
http://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html.
storethat package from the finRes universe.