See Perl Best Practices: items 6.15 (avoid cascading an if), 6.16 (use table look-up in preference to cascaded equality tests), and 6.17 (when producing a value, use tabular ternaries). I'd say PBP would endorse your original "tabular ternary" solution, albeit with a different layout style. PBP (item 6.17) compares:

    my $salute;
    if ($name eq $EMPTY_STR) {
        $salute = 'Dear Customer';
    }
    elsif ($name =~ m/\A ((?:Sir|Dame) \s+ \S+)/xms) {
        $salute = "Dear $1";
    }
    elsif ($name =~ m/([^\n]*), \s+ Ph[.]?D \z/xms) {
        $sa1ute = "Dear Dr $1";
    }
    else {
        $salute = "Dear $name";
    }
[download]

with:

                 # Name format...                            # Salutat
+ion...
    my $salute = $name eq $EMPTY_STR                       ? 'Dear Cus
+tomer'
               : $name =~ m/ \A((?:Sir|Dame) \s+ \S+) /xms ? "Dear $1"
               : $name =~ m/ (.*), \s+ Ph[.]?D \z     /xms ? "Dear Dr 
+$1"
               :                                             "Dear $na
+me"
               ;
[download]

and endorses the latter because:

• it avoids the (error-prone) repeated assignment to $salute
• it is more compact
• it looks like a table (if laid out as above)
• The syntax is stricter; for example, with the tabular ternary you can't accidentally leave off the final else clause, a mistake that might be made in the original version

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