While Aristotle posted a solution that more closely approximates the switch/case behavior, but - aside from the additional tests - isn't yours the better way to do it in Perl (meaning that it's a hell of a lot more readable as the number of cases grows)?

Or what about:

$accum = '';
for ( $var ) {
 if ( $_ <  1 ) {  last;  } else { $accum = 'j'.$accum; }
 if ( $_ <  2 ) {  last;  } else { $accum = 'i'.$accum; }
 if ( $_ <  3 ) {  last;  } else { $accum = 'h'.$accum; }
 if ( $_ <  4 ) {  last;  } else { $accum = 'g'.$accum; }
 if ( $_ <  5 ) {  last;  } else { $accum = 'f'.$accum; }
 if ( $_ <  6 ) {  last;  } else { $accum = 'e'.$accum; }
 if ( $_ <  7 ) {  last;  } else { $accum = 'd'.$accum; }
 if ( $_ <  8 ) {  last;  } else { $accum = 'c'.$accum; }
 if ( $_ <  9 ) {  last;  } else { $accum = 'b'.$accum; }
 $accum = 'a'.$accum;
}
[download]

Wouldn't that be similar, but provide a shortcut out (so we don't always run ten tests)? Also, push-ing onto an array and join-ing it at the end might be a little more flexible than the . operator...

Just musing (as usual)...

--J

Update: The examples using goto further down are even faster (fewer tests) and preserve the fallthrough and the ability to execute arbitrary code in each case (rather than literally doing string manipulation), but you get an earful from purists when you use goto. :-)