Idea for compact, coordinated, if/elif/else syntax: 

ascii? say "It's ascii"
iso-8859-1? say "It's iso-8859-1"

Test for the previous expression being a ?, then you don't have to have the
if/elif/else problem! Then otherwise might be a better keyword, but else can
probably do the job just as well.

ascii? say "It's ascii"
iso-8859-1? say "It's iso-8859-1"
else say "Unknown encoding"

Seems pretty good.

-- 
Sean B. Palmer, inamidst.com