I too use sometimes "large" switches (some hundred) and I'm far from happy about. For larger switches, I use nested switches, but I find very difficult to compare performance of nested switches (i.e.: a 1000 elements switch can be nested in three switches of 10 elements) against single global switches. I imagine that there's a "performance function" changing the number of switch level and number of switch elements, but I presume that it would be difficult to calculate; can someone explore the matter by tests?
Another way would be, to implement a .split() function to transform a string into a list, at least; much better, to implement a JSON parsing of a JSON string, to get lists and dictionaries from strings saved into pages. I guess a dramatic improvement of performance; but I'm far from sure about.
Alex brollo