The following routine works: 

SV *make_aoa_c( int n_rows, int n_cols ) {
  int i, j;
  char *foo = "foo";
  AV *table = newAV();
  AV *row;

  for ( i = 0; i < n_rows; ++i ) {
    row = newAV();
    for ( j = 0; j < n_cols; ++j ) {
        av_push( row, newSVpv( foo, 0 ) );
    }
    av_push( table, newRV_noinc( row ) );
  }

  return newRV_noinc( table );
}

[download]
$ ./751041.pl 1
1: 78836 (233391 us)
2: 78872 (216509 us)
3: 78872 (206672 us)
4: 78872 (206775 us)
5: 78872 (206308 us)
6: 78872 (207777 us)
7: 78872 (206677 us)
8: 78872 (206739 us)
9: 78872 (206675 us)
10: 78872 (205979 us)

[download]

No memory leak, and if I dump $table (e.g. using Data::Dumper, with a size of 3 x 3 or so), it holds the expected data...

(I think you were just doing more mortalizing than necessary...  The newRV_noinc makes sure that the arrays' reference counts stay at 1, so they'll get freed, when the respective outer structure is being freed.)

For comparison, the pure-Perl implementation (still slightly faster/smaller): 

$ ./751041.pl 0
1: 78696 (213442 us)
2: 78704 (208485 us)
3: 78704 (175431 us)
4: 78704 (175438 us)
5: 78704 (175422 us)
6: 78704 (175486 us)
7: 78704 (175667 us)
8: 78704 (175647 us)
9: 78704 (175682 us)
10: 78704 (175687 us)

[download]

In reply to Re^2: Inline::C's AoA is much bigger than Perl's by almut
in thread Inline::C's AoA is much bigger than Perl's by tlm

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