I have a function to search an array of objects for a matching value using the eq operator, like so:

sub find {
    my ( $self, %params ) = @_;
    my @entries = @{ $self->{_entries} };

    if ( $params{filename} ) {
        @entries = grep { $_->filename eq $params{filename} } @entries;
    }
    if ( $params{date} ) {
        @entries = grep { $_->date eq $params{date} } @entries;
    }
    if ( $params{title} ) {
        @entries = grep { $_->title eq $params{title} } @entries;
    }
    ....

I wanted to also be able to pass in a qr quoted variable to use in the comparison instead but the only way I can think of separating the comparisons is using an if/else block, like so:

if (lc ref($params{whatever}) eq 'regexp') {
    #use =~
} else {
    #use eq
}

Is there a shorter way of doing it? Because of reasons beyond my control I'm using Perl 5.8.8 so I can't use the smart match operator.

TIA