This is a little clumsy, but you could have
'?' => 'HELP', etc, then use a loop at startup that replaced non-code refs with the code ref of the hash indice the value side points to.
It doesn't completely solve the semantic problem, but if you rename a routine, you only have to touch it one place, and adding synonyms becomes trivial.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my %hash = ('HELP' => \&do_help,
'?' => 'HELP',
'LIST' => \&do_list,
'SHOW' => 'LIST',
'TEST' => \&do_test,
);
{
while (my ($k, $v) = each (%hash))
{
$hash {$k} = $hash {$v} if (ref $hash {$k} ne 'CODE');
}
&{$hash {'HELP'}};
&{$hash {'?'}};
&{$hash {'LIST'}};
&{$hash {'SHOW'}};
&{$hash {'TEST'}};
}
sub do_help {print "help\n"}
sub do_list {print "list\n"}
sub do_test {print "test\n"}
--Chris
e-mail jcwren