varid return value

The netcdf man page indicates that ncvarid will return a value of -1 if an error occurs. I have the following code and I know that "head_temp2" does not exist in the netcdf file. 

my $vid = NetCDF::varid($ncid, "head_temp2");
print("$vid\n);
I get the error "ncvarid: ncid 5: Variable not found" when this is run. Ultimately what I want to do is test if a variable exists and set a flag based on the result so I'm not necessarily tied to varid. 

Gary

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