While I agree that my code isn't the best, I tend to write switches like this (which I learned back in 1995, using perl 4)

SWITCH: for ($mystring) {
    /key1/ && do {
        …
        last SWITCH;
    };
    /key2/ && do {
        …
        last SWITCH;
    };
    /key3/ && do {
        …
        last SWITCH;
    };
    # default
        …
        last SWITCH;
}
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