$ gdb /usr/local/bin/perl  core
...
Core was generated by `/usr/local/bin/perl -lw ./959669.pl 128'.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
#0  0x00007f8382eb85c5 in new (classname=0x11b1170 "fred", bits=<optimized out>) at test.xs:23
23	    SvLEN_set( obj, bytes );
(gdb) q