Another way of doing this is simulate a switch-case construct.Here's an example from the Perl documentation on how to do this :

SWITCH: for (ref $whatchamacallit) {

    /^$/        && die "not a reference";

    /SCALAR/    && do {
                print_scalar($$ref);
                last SWITCH;
            };

    /ARRAY/        && do {
                print_array(@$ref);
                last SWITCH;
            };

    /HASH/        && do {
                print_hash(%$ref);
                last SWITCH;
            };

    /CODE/        && do {
                warn "can't print function ref";
                last SWITCH;
            };

    # DEFAULT

    warn "User defined type skipped";

    }
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