I'd forgotten to check Perl Best Practices when writing the root node; from its Error Handling chapter (practices 171-184):

• Throw exceptions instead of returning special values or setting flags
• Make failed builtins throw exceptions too
• Make failures fatal in all contexts
• Be careful when testing for failure of the system builtin
• Throw exceptions on all failures, including recoverable ones
• Have exceptions report from the caller's location, not from the place where they were thrown
• Compose error messages in the recipient's dialect
• Document every error message in the recipient's dialect
• Use exception objects whenever failure data needs to be conveyed to a handler
• Use exception objects when error messages may change
• Use exception objects when two or more exceptions are related
• Catch exception objects in most-derived-first order
• Build exception classes automatically
• Unpack the exception variable in extended exception handlers

See Also

• Ten Essential Development Practices article by Damian Conway: Essential practice No. 8: Throw Exceptions Instead of Returning Special Values or Setting Flags - more detail in the Perl Best Practices book, Chapter 13, Error Handling

• Re^3: What technical benfits perl offers over python + few more questions. by ikegami (2021) - Perl has exceptions, and that's nothing new. Exceptions are thrown using die, and caught using eval BLOCK
• New built-in perl5.38 try/catch syntax by me (2023) - sample code using Perl's latest built-in try/catch syntax

• Try Catch syntax - experimental feature added in perl 5.34
• Try::Tiny by Karen Etheridge
• TryCatch by Ash Berlin

• Re^2: [RFC] Review of module code and POD by Bod (April 2 2021 ... not April 1 ;-)
• Re: Best practices for handling errors by me (2014)
• Re^3: What technical benfits perl offers over python + few more questions. (Try Catch) by me (2021)

• DBI RaiseError attribute (PrintWarn, PrintError, RaiseWarn, RaiseError, HandleError, ...) - DBI's approach to error handling influenced Bod during design

• Re^2: SQL: Update column(s) value with extra WHERE by Marshall (2023) - advises using DBI RaiseError attribute
• Re^3: SQL: Update column(s) value with extra WHERE by bliako - ... prefers to check the error code of each DBI function call
• Re^8: STDERR in Test Results by bliako - ditto
• Re^5: SQL: Update column(s) value with extra WHERE (Real-time Computing and Virtual Machine References) by me - performance is almost never a reason to avoid exceptions in C++ (TODO: what is performance cost of throwing exceptions in Perl?)

• Re: eval to replace die? (Exceptions and Error Handling References)

Updated: added more references to the See Also section.