case

TLDR

Match a variable against string literals to decide which command to run

$ case [$tocount] in [words]) [wc -w README]; ;; [lines]) [wc -l README]; ;; esac

Combine patterns with |, use * as a fallback pattern

$ case [$tocount] in [[wW]|words]) [wc -w README]; ;; [[lL]|lines]) [wc -l README]; ;; *) [echo "what?"]; ;; esac