diff --git a/CHANGES.current b/CHANGES.current
index 9811978bb..bf1de87f3 100644
--- a/CHANGES.current
+++ b/CHANGES.current
@@ -1,6 +1,9 @@
 Version 1.3.30 (in progress)
 ============================
 
+10/03/2006: olly
+	    [Perl] Fix for handling strings with zero bytes from Stephen Hutsal.
+
 09/30/2006: efuzzyone
             [CFFI] Bitfield support and vararg support due to Arthur Smyles.
             C expression to Lisp conversion, thanks to Arthur Smyles for the initial
diff --git a/Lib/perl5/std_common.i b/Lib/perl5/std_common.i
index b3e0b9b31..bc25b353f 100644
--- a/Lib/perl5/std_common.i
+++ b/Lib/perl5/std_common.i
@@ -19,7 +19,8 @@ double SwigSvToNumber(SV* sv) {
 }
 std::string SwigSvToString(SV* sv) {
     STRLEN len;
-    return SvPV(sv,len);
+    char *ptr = SvPV(sv, len);
+    return std::string(ptr, len);
 }
 void SwigSvFromString(SV* sv, const std::string& s) {
     sv_setpvn(sv,s.data(),s.size());