PilotinControl:

If you're just wanting to simplify conditional statements like the ones you've shown, I typically use a function like this:

use strict;
use warnings;

sub between {
   my ($min, $val, $max) = @_;
   return $val>=$min && $val<=$max;
}

for my $range (450, 475, 500, 550, 450, 350, 250, 100) {
    print "Range: $range\n";
    if (between(300, $range, 400)) {
        exit;
    }
    if (between(425, $range, 500)) {
        print "LIGHTS ON\n";
    }
}
[download]

$ perl t.pl
Range: 450
LIGHTS ON
Range: 475
LIGHTS ON
Range: 500
LIGHTS ON
Range: 550
Range: 450
LIGHTS ON
Range: 350
[download]

If you need to get fancier and build your functions dynamically (such as reading the values from a file), I tend to use a closure to generate them:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;

# Build the functions
my @tests;
while (<DATA>) {
    my ($min, $max, $message) = split /\s+/, $_, 3;
    push @tests, make_test_function($min, $max, $message);
}

my $range = 0;
while ($range < 600) {
    print "Range: $range\n";
    for my $test (@tests) {
        $test->($range);
    }
    $range += int(100*rand);
}

sub make_test_function {
    my ($min, $max, $message) = @_;
    return sub {
        my $val = shift;
        print $message if $val >= $min and $val <= $max;
    }
}

__DATA__
100 350  In range A
200 500  In range B
300 400  In range C
[download]

$ perl t.pl
Range: 0
Range: 10
Range: 10
Range: 25
Range: 56
Range: 144
In range A
Range: 208
In range A
In range B
Range: 254
In range A
In range B
Range: 323
In range A
In range B
In range C
Range: 379
In range B
In range C
Range: 468
In range B
Range: 530
Range: 550
Range: 557
[download]

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

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