But doesn't that still give you an undefined  $1 that needs to be 'fixed' sooner or later?

>perl -wMstrict -le
"'AZ' =~ /A( [^Z]*)?Z/;
 print qq{'$1'};
"
Use of uninitialized value $1 in concatenation (.) or string at ...
''
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'Elegance', admittedly protean, would yet seem to require avoiding this extra step.