diff --git a/LIMITATIONS.md b/LIMITATIONS.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..bffaabf1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LIMITATIONS.md
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+To simplify the engineering, we make some assumptions that can be lifted with some effort:
+
+- This library cannot parse JSON document of size 16MB or more.
+- We expect the input memory pointer to 256-bit aligned and to be padded (e.g., with spaces) so that it can be read entirely in blocks of 256 bits.
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 9d8480819..6edaf7902 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 
 .PHONY: clean cleandist
 
-CXXFLAGS =  -std=c++11 -O2 -march=native -Wall -Wextra -Wshadow -Iinclude  -Ibenchmark/linux -Idependencies/double-conversion -Idependencies/rapidjson/include -Ldependencies/double-conversion/release
+CXXFLAGS =  -std=c++11 -g2 -O2 -march=native -Wall -Wextra -Wshadow -Iinclude  -Ibenchmark/linux -Idependencies/double-conversion -Idependencies/rapidjson/include -Ldependencies/double-conversion/release
 LIBFLAGS = -ldouble-conversion
 
 EXECUTABLES=parse jsoncheck minifiercompetition parsingcompetition
diff --git a/include/jsonparser/jsonioutil.h b/include/jsonparser/jsonioutil.h
index 67ba72a90..54804b7bc 100644
--- a/include/jsonparser/jsonioutil.h
+++ b/include/jsonparser/jsonioutil.h
@@ -9,8 +9,12 @@
 
 #include "common_defs.h"
 
+// load a file in memory...
 // get a corpus; pad out to cache line so we can always use SIMD
 // throws exceptions in case of failure
+// first element of the pair is a string (null terminated)
+// whereas the second element is the length.
+// caller is responsible to free (free std::pair<u8 *, size_t>.first)
 std::pair<u8 *, size_t> get_corpus(std::string filename);
 
 #endif
diff --git a/include/jsonparser/simdjson_internal.h b/include/jsonparser/simdjson_internal.h
index 997222507..d36721bbc 100644
--- a/include/jsonparser/simdjson_internal.h
+++ b/include/jsonparser/simdjson_internal.h
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@
 #endif
 
 #include <iostream>
+#define MAX_JSON_BYTES 0xFFFFFF
 
 const u32 MAX_DEPTH = 256;
 const u32 DEPTH_SAFETY_MARGIN = 32; // should be power-of-2 as we check this
@@ -28,9 +29,9 @@ struct ParsedJson {
   // grossly overprovisioned
   u64 tape[MAX_TAPE];
   u32 tape_locs[MAX_DEPTH];
-  u8 string_buf[512 * 1024];
+  u8 string_buf[MAX_JSON_BYTES];
   u8 *current_string_buf_loc;
-  u8 number_buf[512 * 1024]; // holds either doubles or longs, really
+  u8 number_buf[MAX_JSON_BYTES * 4]; // holds either doubles or longs, really
   u8 *current_number_buf_loc;
 };
 
diff --git a/src/jsonioutil.cpp b/src/jsonioutil.cpp
index 581afe8e9..4ac8a9d9e 100644
--- a/src/jsonioutil.cpp
+++ b/src/jsonioutil.cpp
@@ -5,13 +5,16 @@ std::pair<u8 *, size_t> get_corpus(std::string filename) {
   if (is) {
     std::stringstream buffer;
     buffer << is.rdbuf();
-    size_t length = buffer.str().size();
+    size_t length = buffer.str().size(); // +1 for null
     char *aligned_buffer;
-    if (posix_memalign((void **)&aligned_buffer, 64, ROUNDUP_N(length, 64))) {
+    size_t paddedlength = ROUNDUP_N(length, 64);
+    if (posix_memalign((void **)&aligned_buffer, 64, paddedlength + 1)) {
       throw std::runtime_error("Could not allocate sufficient memory");
     };
-    memset(aligned_buffer, 0x20, ROUNDUP_N(length, 64));
+    //memset(aligned_buffer, 0x20, ROUNDUP_N(length + 1, 64));
     memcpy(aligned_buffer, buffer.str().c_str(), length);
+    memset(aligned_buffer + length, 0x20, paddedlength - length);
+    aligned_buffer[paddedlength] = '\0';
     is.close();
     return std::make_pair((u8 *)aligned_buffer, length);
   }
diff --git a/src/jsonparser.cpp b/src/jsonparser.cpp
index ccedadcbe..4e00f14ef 100644
--- a/src/jsonparser.cpp
+++ b/src/jsonparser.cpp
@@ -6,8 +6,8 @@
 // This structure is meant to be reused from document to document, as needed.
 // you can use deallocate_ParsedJson to deallocate the memory.
 ParsedJson *allocate_ParsedJson(size_t len) {
-  if (len > 0xffffff) {
-    std::cerr << "Currently only support JSON files < 16MB, requested length: "
+  if (len > MAX_JSON_BYTES) {
+    std::cerr << "Currently only support JSON files having up to "<<MAX_JSON_BYTES<<" bytes, requested length: "
               << len << std::endl;
     return NULL;
   }
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ void deallocate_ParsedJson(ParsedJson *pj_ptr) {
   if (pj_ptr == NULL)
     return;
   delete[] pj_ptr->structural_indexes;
-  delete[] pj_ptr->structurals;
+  free(pj_ptr->structurals);
   delete pj_ptr;
 }