use or require it in an eval and then immediately test the value of $@

See for example the section "Background" in Try::Tiny for a discussion of the problems with $@. It's safer to do something like this:

print eval 'use Data::Dumper; 1' ? 'success' : 'failure', "\n";
print eval 'use Unknown;      1' ? 'success' : 'failure', "\n";
__END__
success
failure
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