The question is moot, since Perl is written in C and one can be expressed in terms of the other.

You can write things quickly in Perl, as runrig so eloquently states, then, should your Perl prototype be too slow, you can use Devel::DProf to pinpoint where the most time is being spent, and then recast those parts in C. These days, with the advent of Inline this is not as difficult as it sounds. Otherwise, if your are brave, you can write your own XS code.

And then, looking at things the other way around, nothing is stopping you from embedding Perl inside your own C program, thus again giving you the best of both worlds.

--

g r i n d e r
print@_{sort keys %_},$/if%_=split//,'= & *a?b:e\f/h^h!j+n,o@o;r$s-t%t#u';