If you don't want the code to die, you need to use something to catch the exception. I like Try::Tiny:

use Try::Tiny;

my @bad  = try   { fill_in_the_blanks(qw<_ _ _>) } # fails
           catch { print "bad data!\n" };
my @good = try   { fill_in_the_blanks(qw<_ 1 _>) } # succeeds
           catch { print "bad data!\n" };
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