irssi plugin to munge nick and away message, preserving base nick

cmd_availability.pl

#!/usr/bin/env perl

# Usage: /AVAILABILITY [here|lunch|meeting]
sub cmd_availability {
    # data - contains the parameters for /HELLO
    # server - the active server in window
    # witem - the active window item (eg. channel, query)
    #         or undef if the window is empty
    my ($data, $server, $witem) = @_;
    
    if (!$server || !$server->{connected}) {
      Irssi::print("Not connected to server");
      return;
    }

    # find the 'base' of our current nick (using | as a separator
    my ($base_nick) = ($server->{nick} =~ m{^([^\|]+)});
    $base_nick ||= 'borked';

    my %availability_for = (
        coffee      => 'Wandered out to buy a coffee based beverage',
        firesafety  => 'Performing Fire Safety Tasks',
        gone        => q{Gone somewhere that's not here - probably home},
        lunch       => 'Gone to lunch',
        meeting     => 'In a meeting',
    );

    if ($data) {
        if ($data =~ /^here$/i) {
            $server->command("AWAY");
            $server->command("NICK ${base_nick}");
        }
        elsif (exists $availability_for{$data}) {
            $server->command("NICK ${base_nick}|$data");
            $server->command("AWAY $availability_for{$data}");
        }
        else {
            Irssi::print("Unknown availability type '$data'");
        }
    }
    else {
      Irssi::print("No availability type given");
    }
}

Irssi::command_bind('availability', 'cmd_availability');
Irssi::print("loaded cmd_availability.pl");