On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 09:49:26PM +0100, William S Fulton wrote: > const char *nptr = SvPV(obj, PL_na);
Not the answer to the question you asked, but could I suggest re-writing that as const char *nptr = SvPV_nolen(obj); PL_na is less efficient - for non-gcc builds it uses a global variable for non-threaded builds, and access to thread-local storage for threaded builds. Nicholas Clark