If you have quite a lot of inputs it may be viable to read them in in one hit.

my $query = new CGI;
my %inputs = $query->Vars;  # All params passed in now in hash

# Now can just use exists check to see if we have it 
if(exists $input{'page'} && exists $input{'page'} ne '') {
  # Do stuff
} else {

}
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Now can just use the 'exists' check to find if you have a particular input Just another way of doing it....