In your approach, all dispatches have to be integer based (array) where as with a hash, you have the luxury of using any scalar value.

The last bit should be "any string", not "any scalar value".

And in his approach, all dispatches have to be regex-based, and that's rather more luxurious than any constant string.

The cost is in speed. His dispatch takes O(N) to find the correct dispatch, not O(1).

my $action;

for my $dispatch (@$dispatch_tables) {
    my $regex = $dispatch->{regex};
    if ($input =~ $regex) {
        $action = $dispatch->{action};
        last;
    }
}

die("No match\n") if !$action;
$action->($input);
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