Changes for version 0.07

  • Added support for building the DB files from the more recent zip-code data here:
    • http://civicspacelabs.org/releases/zipcodes/zipcodes-csv-10-Aug-2004.tgz
  • The old data will continue to work. (Sam Tregar)
  • The following changes contributed by Scott Gifford of HomeSurfUSA.com
    • Subclassing
    • Move database installation code from load.pl into a module, to make subclassing easier.
    • Modify instructions to discuss proposed "Geo::PostalCode::US" to get US postal codes.
    • New Functionality
    • You can specify constructor arguments "units" or "earth_radius" to change the units that Geo::PostalCode operates in. By default it supports miles and kilometers, but it can support any unit if you provide the earth's radius in that unit.
    • Speed Improvements for Very Large Searches
    • Allow overriding B-Tree cache size with "cachesize" constructor argument.
    • Very small speedups in query_postal_codes.
    • Major Cleanup
    • All required files for testing included in package, so that a "make test" from CPAN will succeed.
    • Minor Cleanup
    • Better error checking of database tie commands.
    • Minor syntax fixes to split.
    • Use name "geo_postalcode_makedb" instead of "load.pl", so it can be installed in a bin directory.

Modules

Find closest zipcodes, distance, latitude, and longitude.
Create and install a new location database for Geo::PostalCode.