Internal compiler error in egcs-970922

[Bernd Nottelmann]

The following code causes an "Internal compiler error":
----------------------------------------------------------
extern int foo(char* charset) ;

struct strRep
{
    unsigned len;
    unsigned sz;
    char s[1];
};

strRep* string_Scat(strRep*, const char*, int, const char*, int);

class string
{

protected:
    strRep* rep;

public:
    string();
    string(const string& x);
    string(const char* t);

    ~string();

    friend inline void cat(const string&, const char*, string&);
    const char* chars() const;
    unsigned int length() const;
};

inline void cat(const string& x, const char* y, string& r)
{
    r.rep = string_Scat(r.rep, x.chars(), x.length(), y, -1);
}

inline string operator + (const string& x, const char* y) return r;
{
    cat(x, y, r);
}

void set_status(string message);


class StatusDelay {
private:
    string cause;

public:
    StatusDelay(const string& c)
        : cause(c)
    {
        set_status(cause + "...");
    }

    ~StatusDelay()
    {
        set_status(cause + "...done.");
    }
};

static char delay_message[] = "Filtering files";

static void searchRemote()
{
    StatusDelay delay(delay_message);

    if (!foo("blah")) return;
}

----------------------------------------------------------
(The code was extracted from ddd-2.1.1.)
It was compiled with
g++  -O[2] -c -o file.o file.C

Without optimization nothing happens.
My OS is linux-2.0.30, c-library is libc.so.5.4.39, egcs-version:
> g++ -v
Reading specs from
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-linux-gnulibc1/egcs-2.90.09/specs
gcc version egcs-2.90.09 970922 (gcc2-970802 experimental)