Altough you have said that you are not using object-oriented techniques, what chromatic gave you reads like this: $container->action() or $object->action() which looks quite elegant to me. Instead of dispatch tables, you would have two classes and then choose what kind of object to create depending on your $type variable. Then, for each class, you would have your special $actions (methods). That way your main code is the same for both containers and objects, and their differences are hidden in their own space.

Julio