A possible workaround redirecting STDERR: 
$ perl -i.bak -pe 's/AJZ/AZZ/g if /^AB/' foobar 2> error.txt

~
$ cat error.txt
Can't open foobar: No such file or directory.

[download]
So you would just need to check if a non-empty error.txt file is created.

In reply to Re: Capture error from one-liner by Laurent_R
in thread Capture error from one-liner by dirtdog

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