Bug #119827 for Text-CSV_XS: 'parse' method accepts incorrect arguments

Hiya, First some info: Distro: Text::CSV_XS - $VERSION = "1.26"; Perl: This is perl 5, version 16, subversion 3 (v5.16.3) built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread O/S: Caption OperatingSystemSKU OSProductSuite Version Microsoft Windows 10 Home 101 768 10.0.14393 Next, the issue: I was using Perl CPAN package "Text::CSV_XS" recently and noticed something odd. I accidentally fed the 'parse' method the results from a valid 'get_line' method call. 'parse' wants a string but I gave it an array ref. What it gave back was an array with one index who's value was the stringified version of the array ref argument: 'ARRAY(0x9e3760)' No error, no complaints! I had to do some head scratching before I figured out what was going on. I haven't tried other tests such as feeding 'parse' a hash ref but it makes me wonder if, for simplicity sake, 'parse' just stringifies whatever is given to it. I think better would be if it used a line such as the below, which would at least eliminate the caller accidentally giving it a ref: ref $str and croak 'Argument is a reference not a string!'; I realize it's really up to the caller to not do Bad Things in this case but the above is some pretty non-intrusive argument checking. This could conceivably be considered more a feature request than bug but I'm leaning towards the latter. Here's the code I used: use strict; use warnings; use Text::CSV_XS; use Data::Dumper; my $csv_file_with_header = 'test_csv_xs.csv'; my $csv = Text::CSV_XS->new({binary => 1, auto_diag => 1, eol => $/}); my $csv_fh; if(open($csv_fh, "<", $csv_file_with_header)) { my $header_rec = $csv->getline($csv_fh) or die $csv->error_diag(); $csv->parse($header_rec) or die $csv->error_diag(); my @columns = $csv->fields(); print Dumper(\@columns) . "\n"; close $csv_fh; } exit 1; And here is what the header record looks like: "Entry Type","Cust ID",Company,"Item ID","Item Ident","Kit ID","Kit Ident","Date Sync",Notes And here's the result: $VAR1 = [ 'ARRAY(0x9e3760)' ]; Thanks for writing and maintaining Text::CSV_XS :) Stuart Lemmen IT Development & Support Excelsior Integrated LLC 413-394-4340 clemmen@excelsiorintegrated.com<mailto:clemmen@excelsiorintegrated.com> www.excelsiorintegrated.com<http://www.excelsiorintegrated.com/> [Excelsior Integrated Small][MCM 3PL seal vector]