Curiously, when I run the following command-line script on my mac (to replicate the essentials of your code), the "bfac" call apparently does not return, and the process runs in a seemingly infinite loop, chewing up cpu time: 
perl -MMath::BigFloat -e '$|++;$x=Math::BigFloat->new("2.0");
print "\ncalling bpow at ",scalar(localtime)."\n";$x->bpow("128");
print "calling copy at ",scalar(localtime)."\n";$p=$x->copy();
print "calling bfac at ",scalar(localtime)."\n";$p->bfac();
print "finished at ",scalar(localtime)."\n"'

calling bpow at Wed Aug 11 21:44:28 2010
calling copy at Wed Aug 11 21:44:28 2010
calling bfac at Wed Aug 11 21:44:28 2010

[download]
(still running an hour later... oh well, I'm just going to kill it now.) FWIW, I'm using the version that comes with "snow leopard" (osx 10.6.4): 
  This is perl, v5.10.0 built for darwin-thread-multi-2level

[download]
When you ran your script, did it crash right away, or did it run for a long time before crashing?

(Updated my command-line script to include the (rather important) first line of the command.)

In reply to Re: undefined value as an ARRAY by graff
in thread undefined value as an ARRAY by mgwmgw

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