Although I really like the AUTOLOAD approach, I've used a different method in the past.

WARNING: The following code could cause nasty personal side effects, not limited to people running when they see you.

my @tags= qw/name gender address/;

foreach my $t (@tags)
 {
  eval "sub $t { \$state{'$name'} = 1; }";
  eval "sub ${t}_ { \$state{'$name'} = 1; }";
 }
[download]

Of course, if you find that one too disgusting. You could always run a loop once to write the appropriate code to a Perl module file and then use that file.

BEGIN
 {
  unless(-e "Tags.pm")
  {
    my @tags= qw/name gender address/;

    open( F, ">Tags.pm" )
              or die "Unable to create Tags.pm:$!";

    foreach my $t (@tags)
     {
      print F "sub $t { \$state{'$name'} = 1; }\n";
      print F "sub ${t}_ { \$state{'$name'} = 1; }\n";
     }
    print F "1;\n";
    close( F ) or die "Unable to close Tags.pm:$!";
   }
 }

use Tags;
[download]

Ain't code that writes code a wonderful thing.

Update: I forgot to add the "1;" at the end.

G. Wade