It all depends on the time period you have for analysis of those logs, and how time critical it all is.
C, if properly written and optimised will beat Perl, due to lower overheads.
However, if you're doing Regexp matches on those logs (and why else would you program them??), then I think the whole thing becomes moot.
As far as I'm aware, the C lib for pattern matching is only as fast as the Perl one. The advantages gained by using C become almost insignificant.
Looking at the spec of this, I'd go for Perl. It's likely to have fewer gotchas than an equivalent C program for a marginal extra system overhead.
And if, once you've proved the system, they want more and faster, then, Perl has just made an excellent prototyping language.

Just my tuppence worth. :)

Malk

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