The first thing I'd do to make that more maintainable is refactor it all into a series of well-named minimized-coupling subroutines, no longer than 20-30 lines each, and ideally about 10 lines each. That'd also remove about 90% of the global variables, which are generally also a sign of fragile code.

The second thing I'd do is take that middle switch out of there, and capture the regularities with code, and the irregularites with data. I bet you wrote a lot of it with cut and paste, and that should always be a clue.

Let me repeat. Cut and paste is generally a clue that you're doing something wrong.

On a longer-term basis, factoring out some of that code for re-use might be useful, which would also make testing easier. But unless you're also doing some similar tasks later, that might be an expense with no payback.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.