A valid question. My guess is yes, but that's based on tuning the custom C program based on what system it runs on. It also depends if this is a one-time job or a weekly/monthly thing, as my initial post said. For a one-time thing, definitely go Perl. For a weekly job, it's worth the investment to write a really well-tuned, optimized C program.

--t. alex

"Nyahhh (munch, munch) What's up, Doc?" --Bugs Bunny