If you go the OO way, you (usually) *wouldn't* write your functions to get a type by name. Rather, your registry would simply become a very simple (conceptually speaking) map from names to objects; if the calling code already has the reference to the object it is working on, it simply invokes what is now a proper method on that object. The registry gives you: (a) a convenient way to get the object if you only have its name, and (b) a reference to the object that lives as long as the program does.

If separating different parts of each object (/ different aspects of each type) looks like a concern to you, then perhaps you need to deepen you object model (that's what you do in OO in these cases). So you say each "type" is really a disk file? Then you want a relatively thin File class, that is composed of further objects: FileLocation (directory, text, what you had in your first function), and FileURL (the things you had in your second function). I don't really know if my names make sense: you're the one who knows the business logic -- why you have regexps and urls treated together, for example.