thanx zentara, but it seems to me that this is only available once the eval_sv has been called, i.e. the code has been executed. I would like to know about any compile errors without executing the code; similar to the command line "perl -c -e 'xxx'", but in an 'embedded way'

I could write to file, make a system call, redirect the output to a file,.. but there is certainly a much easier more beautiful solution).