in reply to Tidy up conditions

You could use the short-cut behaviour of boolean operators like this: 
$level =
    $access{$item} ||
    $item =~ /^([^:]+):/ && $access{"$1:*"} ||
    $access{'*'} ||
    0;

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Note that this assumes your %access hash does not contain boolean false values, as your initial solution did. To actually check for the presence of these keys in the hash, the exists function will help.

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Re^2: Tidy up conditions
by tel2 (Pilgrim) on Mar 19, 2015 at 02:01 UTC
    Thanks heaps for that, Martin!  Awesome answer!  Concise, yet...functional.

    I don't understand your concern about boolean false values, though. Could you give me an example which would make your code fail, please?

    Thanks again.
    Tel2

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      my %hash = (0=>'that was false', ''=>'oops false too', 42=>'So very true');

      The first two keys there evaluate to false, and would cause a problem with the code.

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[d/l]
        OK - thanks SJ,

        I had thought that when Martin said "boolean false values", he literally meant hash values, as opposed to hash keys, which is why I questioned it, but I guess he meant values in the more general sense (i.e. keys in this case).

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