The grammar section (?: ... ){0} creates the subroutines...
I'm really confused. Did you invent that construct yourself (which looks broken to me) or is it something special-cased in recent grammars (away from its pointless purpose) and recommended in some document I haven't read yet?
Because if I was writing a regex engine, I'd actually turn {0} into a fatal error, with the invoker needing a clue-bat.
-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.