Ahh, translation is "You want to dynamically pick which method of the CGI.pm object to call, by using the name of the method from a variable."

And what you're asking is how to do the below, which works, in one step:

  my $sub_is = $input_html{$key};
  start_td $query->$sub_is(-name=>'$key');
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Its too early in the morning here, I can't see the better way to do this.