This is a different approach which may or may not suit your needs:

my %types = ( 0 => 'male',
              1 => 'female',
              2 => 'robot' );
$this_user = $types{$some_value};
[download]

Or, if you are going to use the categories only one time, you can code them as an on-the-fly anonymous hash...

$this_user = { 0 => 'male',
               1 => 'female',
               2 => 'robot'  }->{$some_value};
[download]

HTH, David

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"Perl is a mess and that's good because the
problem space is also a mess." - Larry Wall