strange interpreter behavior

[Rick Ree]

I'm writing a python wrapper module for a C++ library.  I have 3 lines
of code that I run to test a new function:

import mymodule

a = mymodule.mytype('hello')

print a.test()  # should return a list of strings


When I run this as a script (i.e., 'python testit.py'), everything is
fine.  But when I invoke the python interpreter and manually type in
the same code, I get a segfault at a.test().

I'm baffled at why this is happening.  Does anyone have any clues?

This is on python 1.5.2, RedHat 5.2.

thanks
Rick