HEAP_MOVED_IN during vacuum?

When I vacuum the database (PostgreSQL 6.5.3 on SuSE 6.3 Linux, 2.2
kernel), I get the following error message:

ERROR: HEAP_MOVED_IN was not expected.
vacuumdb: database vacuum failed on ntis

This error only seems to occur after I have used the trim function to
clean up one of
the rows in the msg table of a database called ntis:

ntis=>update msg set description = trim(description);
UPDATE 12069
ntis=>

To try and track down the problem, I wrote a C program (using ecpg) that
trimmed the table one row at a time and vacuumed between each row
operation.  I was hoping that this program would reveal a problem with
the data in one of my records.  Unfortunately the one row at a time
approach did not reveal the problem and each vacuum operated without
error.

Can anyone tell me what a HEAP_MOVED_IN error is - I checked the source
but was not familiar enough to understand it?  Any ideas on why trim()
may have cause it?