More recent Perls (5.6?) support the POSIX [:class:] syntax, you you can do things like this:

if (/^[:alpha:]+/) {
  print "string is alpha";
} elsif (/^[:digit:]+/) {
  print "string is digits"
} else {
  print "sting is weird stuff";
}
[download]

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me