nntp: avoid modifying $_[0] in RE conversions

nntp: avoid modifying $_[0] in RE conversions

I've been getting occasional t/nntp.t warnings about
uninitialized variables which I'm not able to reproduce
reliably.  My current theory is that modifying $_[0] may get
wonky when it's happening across several layers of the call
stack, so stop doing it since it's unlikely to yield any
real world speedups and only made the code more difficult
to understand, here.