Why have I avoided sorting out subroutine references in my head for so long? The following has taken me about five minutes to get to grips with, and would have been incredibly useful in any of my previous projects.... 
my %comms = ( 'one' => \&subone,
              'two' => \&subtwo,
);

my $subref = $comms{'one'};
&$subref('item');

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It still surprises me that Perl just keeps on making your job easier and easier the more you know about it.
ho hum, onwards.......

In reply to subroutine references by agoth

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