I think that this warning is not caused by that snippet of code. At line 225, Spreadsheet::Format is trying to multiply the string "_size" by something.
Your code snippet only calls set_size($1) when $1 contains a string of digits, so it could not be calling set_size("_size"). (If it were, adding 0 first would just get you a warning for the addition instead.)
Can you edit Spreadsheet/Format.pm and see what is happening at line 225?