You've learnt something important. It's true for any (all?) software development. A warning is a warning and should be respected. There's a reason for it.

Concerning your specific situation, I use the following snippet, written to give the same appearance as does graphical database tools, like SQL Advantage, Cast Workbench and many others. It's just an idea that works in my situation. Copy it and modify it for your specific needs.

sub nullify_array {
for(@_) {
   $_='(null)' unless(defined());
   }
@_;
}
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