## Blah blah blah whatever populates $dumper my $dump_error = undef; my %info; if( not defined $dumper ) { $dump_error = 1; warn qq{Got undefined from dumper.\n}; } else { %info = %{ eval $dumper }; } ## Do something like this to handle the error (or if %info was empty, or . . .) next if $dump_error or %info == 0;