This is a different approach which may or may not suit your needs:
my %types = ( 0 => 'male',
1 => 'female',
2 => 'robot' );
$this_user = $types{$some_value};
Or, if you are going to use the categories only one time, you can code them as an on-the-fly anonymous hash...
$this_user = { 0 => 'male',
1 => 'female',
2 => 'robot' }->{$some_value};
HTH,
David
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"Perl is a mess
and that's good because the
problem space is also a mess." - Larry Wall