I am changing the problem around to make it easier to maintain and expand. If you really need to have compact code, you can change the &replace sub like this:

my %replaces = (
  email => sub { "<a href=mailto:'$_[0]'>$_[1]</a>" },
  url => sub { "<a href='$_[0]'>$_[1]</a>'" },
  # etc etc etc 
);
sub replace {
  my ($tag,$attr,$content) = @_;
  $attr ||= $content;
  return $replaces{$tag}->($attr,$content);
}
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-- 
Joost       downtime n. The period during which a system
            is error-free and immune from user input.
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