under v5.8.1-RC3 built for darwin-thread-multi-2level?
use bytes; print bytes::substr( "abc", 0, 1 );
I also noticed that a call to a non-existent bytes subroutine will cause an infinite loop under v5.8.2 built for i686-linux.
use bytes; print bytes::twtowtdi()
Were these problems resolved in later releases of Perl?
//Ed