You can also profit the read of the main documentation for defined especially:

Use of defined on aggregates (hashes and arrays) is no longer supporte
+d. It used to report whether memory for that aggregate had ever been 
+allocated. You should instead use a simple test for size:

        if (@an_array) { print "has array elements\n" }
        if (%a_hash)   { print "has hash members\n"   }
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L*

See perl5220delta - defined(@array) and defined(%hash) are now fatal errors. removing defined should work fine.

Hi, you can often get more information with diagnostics:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mdiagnostics -wE 'my %foo; say 1 if defined %foo'

Can't use 'defined(%hash)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined()?)
+ at -e
    line 1 (#1)
    (F) defined() is not usually right on hashes.

    Although defined %hash is false on a plain not-yet-used hash, it
    becomes true in several non-obvious circumstances, including itera
+tors,
    weak references, stash names, even remaining true after undef %has
+h.
    These things make defined %hash fairly useless in practice, so it 
+now
    generates a fatal error.

    If a check for non-empty is what you wanted then just put it in bo
+olean
    context (see "Scalar values" in perldata):

        if (%hash) {
           # not empty
        }

    If you had defined %Foo::Bar::QUUX to check whether such a package
    variable exists then that's never really been reliable, and isn't
    a good way to enquire about the features of a package, or whether
    it's loaded, etc.

Uncaught exception from user code:
    Can't use 'defined(%hash)' (Maybe you should just omit the defined
+()?) at -e line 1.
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Hope this helps!