The warning comes from the fact that Perl can't tell if (?{ ... }) matches any characters or not, so it's possible you're putting a quantifier on a zero-width assertion.
Jeff japhy Pinyan,
P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.:
Perl,
regex,
and perlhacker How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart