hmm... how about a suggestion on a different approach? You could put your rule base into a hash, with the 'action' possibilities as keys, storing a hashref with the 'sort' and 'msgid' etc. keys, like this (truncated) example: 

my %RULES = (
    'post' => { 'msgid' => '^(\d+|new)$', 'data' => '...', },
    'edit' => { 'msgid' => '^(\d+|new)$', },
    ...,
};

my $allowed = $RULES{ $query->{'action'} };

foreach $key (keys %$query) {
    exists $allowed->{'key'} ? 1 : return 0;
    ...
}

[download]

Or, since it seems pretty obvious there can be only one action type at a time, you could probably cascade the trinary operator, like so: 

for ($query->{'action'}) {
    $allowed = /post/    ? { ... } :
               /edit/    ? { ... } :
               /delete/  ? { ... } :
                           die "that action isn't supported";
}

[download]

or any variation you like there. The hash-based one is probably faster. 

local $_ = "0A72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A";
while(s/..$//) { print chr(hex($&)) }

[download]

In reply to RE: How to write a nice rule base? by reptile
in thread How to write a nice rule base? by TGI

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.