Second: if what you wish were possible (and easy), that wouldn't work, you'd wish your wish back. Sometimes you want it to die, sometimes - do smth. else.

I often code things as:

sub foo {
  my $error = ...;
  return $error if (defined wantarray || ! $error);
  croak "foo failed: $error";
}
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Now you have a choice. If you check the return value (or assign it to undef), then it won't die. If you're lazy and there's an error, then it dies.