There is no built-in case statement in Perl, but you can build one using a hash and references to subroutines. This is more like a switch, but the principles are the same.

# $action_string is set to something or other.

# actions is a hash whose keys are strings and whose values 
# are references to subroutines

my %actions = ( 
        'display'=> \&show_values(),
        'set'=>    \&set_values(),
        'default' => \&default()
        );

$action_string = 'default'  unless defined($action{$action_string});

$action{$action_string}->(); # calls the subroutine that this hash val
+ue is a reference to

sub set_values {
 # do something
}

sub show_values {
    # do something
}
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Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor

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