How about something like this for the Manufacturer list?

my(%manufacturers)= (
    Cisco        => qr/Cisco/i,
    'TUT Systems'=> qr/Expresso GS|MDU Lite/i,
    Gigalink     => qr/Gigalink/i,
    Huawei       => qr/Huawei/i,
    Orinoco      => qr/AP-2000|AP-1000/i,
    Lucent       => qr/WavePOINT/i,
    HP           => qr/HP/,
    Paradyne     => qr/Paradyne/i,
    Colubris     => qr/CN320/,
    SMC          => qr/TigerSwitch/,
    Ricoh        => qr/RICOH/,                         
);

$ref->{$host}{$ip}{'manufacturer'}='*unknown*';
while (($manu, $re)= each(%manufacturers)) {
    if (/$re/) {
        $ref->{$host}{$ip}{'manufacturer'}=$manu;
        last;
    }
}

[download]
This only works if the sequence of the checks is unimportant. If the sequence does matter, I'd change that to an array: 
my(@manufacturers)= (
    Cisco        => qr/Cisco/i,
    'TUT Systems'=> qr/Expresso GS|MDU Lite/i,
    Gigalink     => qr/Gigalink/i,
    Huawei       => qr/Huawei/i,
    Orinoco      => qr/AP-2000|AP-1000/i,
    Lucent       => qr/WavePOINT/i,
    HP           => qr/HP/,
    Paradyne     => qr/Paradyne/i,
    Colubris     => qr/CN320/,
    SMC          => qr/TigerSwitch/,
    Ricoh        => qr/RICOH/,                         
);

$ref->{$host}{$ip}{'manufacturer'}='*unknown*';
$manu= undef;
foreach $re (@manufacturers) {
    if (defined $manu) {
        if (/$re/) {
            $ref->{$host}{$ip}{'manufacturer'}=$manu;
            last;
        }
        $manu= undef;
    }
    else {
        $manu= $re;
    }
}
print $m;

[download]
$\=~s;s*.*;q^|D9JYJ^^qq^\//\\\///^;ex;print

In reply to Re: Maintainable and robust Pattern Matching with changing goalposts by Skeeve
in thread Maintainable and robust Pattern Matching with changing goalposts by McDarren

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