in reply to build regular expression from scalar?

Here you go, sans if/else:

$actions = "ADD|JUNK|DEL"; sub{(${{ ADD => sub{print "Adding\n"}, DEL => sub{print "Deleting\n"}, REM => sub{print "Removing\n"},}}{$_} or sub{print "I'm Sorry Dave. I can't do <$_>.\n"} )->() }->() for split/\|/,$actions;