It looks like something in the mail chain doesn't like bytes with their high order bits set. Here's a corrected test program that's ASCII. Scott ---------- #!/usr/bin/perl # # Demonstrates memory corruption bug in 5.8.4. The 'use Benchmark' # line does not affect the corruption, but on my system it # moves memory allocations around enough to ensure that 'perl -d bug.pl' # hangs, and that under 'gdb debugperl' it produces a segmentation fault. # The exact string is also unimportant as long as it has characters # that match the string class in the s///. The one chosen here simply # reliably reproduces the problem on my system. # use Encode; use Benchmark; $_ = decode_utf8("\164\151\164\154\145\72\40\303\277\302\200\303\277\303\277\302\202\302\222\303\277\302\217\302\220\303\277\303\277\302\210\303\277\302\201\303\277\303\277\302\202", 1); $_ =~ s/[^[:print:]]/ /g; ----------