Recently while looking for a list of countries to populate a country dropdown box I required I came across a real gem which provided me with exactly what I was looking for. An easy to work with comma separated file (CSV) of 273 countries and territories is available from http://www.andrewpatton.com/countrylist.html. The figure of 273 is based on what various international organizations count as countries.
The data contains not just your basic name column but many other columns too such as 2 letter code, 3 letter code (letter codes are useful for the value property of dropdown/select boxes), TLD, capital, currency code, currency name, telephone code and two or three others as well. Budding software and web developers should find this handy, I know it saved me a good bit of time anyhow. Incidentally the chap that maintains the list has the goal of visiting 50 countries before he’s 50, now that’s a goal.