This is a little clumsy, but you could have  '?' => 'HELP', etc, then use a loop at startup that replaced non-code refs with the code ref of the hash indice the value side points to.

It doesn't completely solve the semantic problem, but if you rename a routine, you only have to touch it one place, and adding synonyms becomes trivial.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my %hash = ('HELP' => \&do_help,
            '?'    => 'HELP',
            'LIST' => \&do_list,
            'SHOW' => 'LIST',
            'TEST' => \&do_test,
           );
           
{
   while (my ($k, $v) = each (%hash))
   {
      $hash {$k} = $hash {$v} if (ref $hash {$k} ne 'CODE');
   }

   &{$hash {'HELP'}};
   &{$hash {'?'}};
   &{$hash {'LIST'}};
   &{$hash {'SHOW'}};
   &{$hash {'TEST'}};
}

sub do_help {print "help\n"}
sub do_list {print "list\n"}
sub do_test {print "test\n"}
[download]

--Chris

e-mail jcwren

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