note BrowserUk <p>I look forward to the power of the P6 Given/When construct immensely, but I still hanker for the the limited but oh-so-useful and efficient switch/case construct. There are so many occasions when this simple integer-based dispatch mechanism is exactly all that is needed, that I think it would be worth having, in addition to the much more powerful, but equally, much less efficient Given/When construct. <p>I'm aware of [theDamian]'s [cpan://switch] module, but it attempts to be much more than a simple switch construct, coming much closer to the given/when flexibility. The downside of that it that it is much less efficient for the predominant 'simple case'. I've also had problems with it getting confused. <p>Hash based dispatch tables are okay and pretty efficient, but the need to put the selected code into either a sub or runtime [eval] makes it less useful for things where the selected code is minimal and speed important. Calling a sub to increment or decrement a count is high overhead if your scanning long strings and maintaining counts as you go. <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-171588"> </div></div><hr /> <font size=1 > <div>Examine what is said, not who speaks.</div> "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham<br /> "Think for yourself!" - [Abigail-II|Abigail] <br /> [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3181108.stm|Hooray!]<br /> </p></font> </div></div> 301355 301588