xsubpp

void XSUBs now default to returning nothing

Due to a documentation/implementation bug in previous versions of Perl, XSUBs with a return type of void have actually been returning one value. Usually that value was the GV for the XSUB, but sometimes it was some already freed or reused value, which would sometimes lead to program failure.

In Perl 5.004, if an XSUB is declared as returning void, it actually returns no value, i.e. an empty list (though there is a backward-compatibility exception; see below). If your XSUB really does return an SV, you should give it a return type of SV *.

For backward compatibility, xsubpp tries to guess whether a void XSUB is really void or if it wants to return an SV *. It does so by examining the text of the XSUB: if xsubpp finds what looks like an assignment to ST(0), it assumes that the XSUB's return type is really SV *.