Also, because I am converting a lot of lisp and scheme code, I dont really like cond very much.

In Perl, I can be much more concise:

return undef if !$bindings ;
return (extend $bindings) if (var_match $pattern) ;
return pat_match(rest $input) if @$input ;
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If you have a default value to return, this is where I prefer to chain the "x ? y : z" operator:

return ! $bindings        ? undef                  :
       var_match $pattern ? extend $bindings       :
       @$input            ? pat_match(rest $input) :
                            $default_value;
[download]

I know that it looks a little odd at first, but once you get used to the syntax, I find it even easier than case or switch statements.

Cheers,
Ovid

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Don't you get into trouble with operator precedence when you do this and start using && and such in your conditionals? Or am I just remembering old bugs in my C code :-)