Update: I didn't read your post carefully enough

You get the result you want, but the semantic is not what you indicate by using exists so I'd rather use defined in that case.

#! perl
use warnings;
use strict;
my @x = (1,2,3,4,5);
delete $x[2];
for (0..4) { print $x[$_] }
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Run it to produce:

Use of uninitialized value in print at checkifexists.pl line 6.
1245
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So, the element exists, but it's value is undefined.