All those if/elsif's make your code look somewhat like 'The Wrong Way' to do it according to the Patterns in Perl web site. I'm not sure how you would fit this problem into something resembling 'The Right Way' though I have an idea. If dcr_type is tainted, you'd have to make sure that it matches '^(CONTACT|FAQ|LITERATURE|ORGANIZATION)$', then assuming that you have those four classes defined, you can just call $dcr_type->new(@args). You could even do $dcr = s/(.*)/\u\L$1/ so you can have normal ucfirst type class names. Keep in mind I haven't really thought much about the OP's problem, so I don't know how appropriate any of this is for this particular case :-)