Going from that discussion it looks like a good part of 'given's usefulness is centred on smartmatch... Which I don't use in any other way, therefore perhaps 'given' is not all that important after all.

At the end of the day I suppose I would just like a perl 'switch/case/default' because I am very used to that way of thinking and controlling execution.

It's essentially the same with For-If just the fall trough is inverse.

See provided code examples.

update

i.e. you need to terminate with explicit next statements to avoid fall through.

  for ($var){
    if (/abc/) { print "abc"}        # falls through
    if (/def/) { print "def" ;next}
    if (/xyz/) { print "xyz" ;next}
    print "default";
  }
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Cheers Rolf

( addicted to the Perl Programming Language)

I actually think that's pretty cool, despite my desire to see a native switch. I have often use hash constructs to accomplish switch-like behavior, and I think that the for ( $var ) ... approach is much nicer...

# Example of the hash-construct "switch", which is limited and has no 
+"default".
# The output of this code is "abc"

use Moo;

my $val  = 'c';
my @args = qw( abc );
my $obj  = __PACKAGE__->new();

{ a => sub { say 'a' },
  b => \&b,
  c => sub { $obj->c( @_ ) },
}->{ $val }->( @args );


sub b { say 'b' };
sub c { shift; say for @_ };
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Tommy
A mistake can be valuable or costly, depending on how faithfully you pursue correction

Hmmm LanX, not unlike the construct I found when and have used ever since, I was looking for an alternative to the Switch modules available at the time - viz...

for ($var){
  SWITCH: {
    /abc/ && do { print "abc"}        # falls through
    /def/ && do { print "def" ; last SWITCH }
    /xyz/ && do { print "xyz" ; last SWITCH }
    print "default";
  };
  .
  .
}
[download]

A construct I much prefer (for readability if nothing else) to what sometimes appear to extend to seemingly interminable if-elif-else constructs.
A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))

If you want to use some kind of switch statement, you could always try searching CPAN for a switch module.

One module that I've recently used was Switch::Plain. If I understand the documentation correctly, it does not use smartmatch. However, it is limited to "simple string or numeric equality tests". The module's author also includes in the documentation a comparison between this module's implementation of switch and C's switch. Depending on your needs, this module might provide what you're looking for since it does provide a "switch/case/default" construct.

Also consider Switcheroo. :-)

use Moops; class Cow :rw { has name => (default => 'Ermintrude') }; say Cow->new->name