Then, you shouldn't printf( "Item %d has %d elements\n", i, av_len( av ) );, if it has in fact av_len(av)+1 (i.e. 10). :)

Anyhow, I think the problem is with reading the string out of sv2 — at least I don't get any sensible values here at all, like 'A'..'J' (only random junk out of memory instead).  I'll take a closer look ... well, no longer required, syphilis has already done so (—> av_fetch is returning an SV**, not SV*)