Fix pointers

[thomassross]

This patch makes the functions not return int * pointers, returning actual integers instead, and also makes parse_string not return an int * pointer but use an actual C int array.

[sstrickl]

My apologies on the delays on getting these pull requests in—for some reason I wasn't getting emailed these, and they were getting drowned out in a sea of web notifications that I hadn't gone through until today.