Just an FYI.

I worked on the dev team for Win2k at MS, and the reskit is pretty much a collection of internal tools that get so much use they decide to sell them. Don't get me wrong, there is also marketing requirements and all the regular crap, but usefulness to the internal teams is one of the main reasons tools get into the reskit.
I used a ton of Perl for test automation when I was at MS and trust me when I say I wasn't the only one. MS has an interest in this stuff for a reason most people don't think of...most of thier developers are *nix geeks, almost all of them in fact! And the tools start to reflect that. In fact I didn't really understand sed until I started using it on Win2k :) (used awk til then)
So, for anyone who has seen a little of the inside of MS this comes as no surprise.

"Nothing is sure but death and taxes" I say combine the two and its death to all taxes!