Turn on warnings and you'll get Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (32766) exceeded (Check perldiag for more info).
It's best you find a simpler way of tokenizing (split on something like /(?<!\\)"/).

MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo! I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6x+5.8x. I take requests. ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.