Replacing If Elsif Else with Hash

[johnfl68]

Hello:

I had the following if elsif else:

        if ($severity eq "Extreme"){
        $background = "red";
        }
        elsif ($severity eq "Severe"){
        $background = "orange";
        }
        elsif ($severity eq "Moderate"){
        $background = "yelow";
        }
        elsif ($severity eq "Minor"){
        $background = "green";
        }
        else {
        $background = "grey";
        }

It worked fine in the script as it was, but when I placed that script into a external subroutine, it broke things (took me a while to figure out that was the part of code causing the issue). So in reading around, many suggest using a hash instead of long if elsif sets. I understand that, and so now I have this:

    my %bkcolor = (
            "Extreme", "red",
            "Severe", "orange",
            "Moderate", "yellow",
            "Minor", "green",
            "", "grey"
        );

    my $background = $bkcolor{$severity};

The question I have is, is there a way to handle the last 'else' when doing things in this manor, so that if 'severity' is anything other than the 4 known responses, it will always be grey?

Or is there another way I should be doing this?

Thanks as always!

John