my fave is to have an array for results, populate it. If the array has 0 array elements in it, return as if no rows returned, or continue as such.

my @x = ();
while( my @arr = fetchrow_array() )
{
  push(@x, \@arr );
}

if( $#x == .... )
else ....
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Not compilable in this form, but it's an idea.