I have been struggling with this for the past few days. I have been trying to debug with GDB, but with out too much success. I'll get straight to the point. my perl looks something like this: 
$page = contents of some web page
$url = url of that web page
$len = #bytes of that web page
$parsed = MyParser($url, $page, $len)

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where MyParser is really just a small passes along data to some other code that a colleague wrote. MyParser looks like: 
char* MyParser(char* url, char* page, int len)
{
        char *pool;

        int ret;

        pool = (char*)malloc(2*len+1);
        // parsing page
        ret = parser(url, page, pool, 2*len+1);
        if(ret > 0)
        {
                return pool;
        }
        else
        {
                return '0';
        }
}

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i know that parser works fine. however, the first time i call this, i get errors like this from GDB 
#0  0x000000398d6a22fd in Perl_sv_setpv () from /usr/lib64/perl5/5.8.6
+/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/CORE/libperl.so
#1  0x00002aaaae180ded in XS_main_MyParser (my_perl=0x505010, cv=0xb36
+1b0) at getandParseWithC_pl_fa1e.c:400
#2  0x000000398d69b67e in Perl_pp_entersub ()
   from /usr/lib64/perl5/5.8.6/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/CORE/libperl.
+so
#3  0x000000398d67f3cd in Perl_runops_debug ()
   from /usr/lib64/perl5/5.8.6/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/CORE/libperl.
+so
#4  0x000000398d639dbe in perl_run () from /usr/lib64/perl5/5.8.6/x86_
+64-linux-thread-multi/CORE/libperl.so
#5  0x0000000000401a01 in main ()

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i dont know why i get errors regarding Perl_sv_setpv since i dont make any use (to my knowledge!) of the perl stack here. can anyone please offer some advice? I throw myself on the mercy of the perl monks!

In reply to some help with inline C by downer

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