Re: G::O::I based bindings and problem passing char array ref

[Jeremy Volkening <jdv base2bio com>]

> > If I futz with the .gir and change the new_from_data() "data"
> > parameter type to a guint8 array (and then pass it a character
> > array ref) I can load and read the page number from most of the
> > files that were previously throwing errors. Then the script
> > segfaults almost every time...
>
> Can you provide a backtrace and or Valgrind output?
>
> # gdb --args perl program.pl
> (gdb) run
> ...
> (gdb) bt
>
> # valgrind perl program.pl

Attached is the valgrind dump from my test script. This is after
changing the section of the .gir for poppler_document_new_from_data()

FROM:

<parameter name="data" transfer-ownership="none">
    <doc xml:space="preserve">the pdf data contained in a char array</doc>
    <type name="utf8" c:type="char*"/>
</parameter>

TO:

<parameter name="data" transfer-ownership="none">
    <doc xml:space="preserve">the pdf data contained in a char array</doc>
    <array length="1" zero-terminated="0" c:type="gchar*">
        <type name="guint8"/>
    </array>
</parameter>


and then passing an array ref. Oddly enough, if I run the test script through
valgrind everything works (i.e. it prints the expected metadata and renders
the first page as PNG). This is true for any PDF. If I run the same command
without valgrind it segfaults. Apparently valgrind helps it survive
errors. This proves in any case that the PDF is being read.

I have also observed that, with the unmodified libs, any PDF that 'file'
reports as 'utf-8' or 'unknown-8bit' works, but anything reported as 
'binary' or 'iso-8859-1' (most files) fails.

Jeremy