Bugs are annoying, but pathetic? That's an odd characterisation, especially considering we have no idea what the bug is.

Line 262 is a blank line. It's surely coming from what I see as line 265:

    /* Get each key string and value node and put them in the hash */
    while ((key_node = load_node(loader))) {
        assert(SvPOK(key_node));                  <---------------
        value_node = load_node(loader);
        hv_store_ent(
            hash, key_node, value_node, 0
        );
    }
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It's expecting load_node to return a scalar already containing a string, but a check finds it doesn't. What does that mean exactly? The module's author could probably tell you faster than I could.