Perl can be faster at reading than C using stdio. I haven't timed C++ using std:: I/O against C's stdio nor against Perl's I/O, so I can't say for sure, but I suspect that Perl can be faster than C++. Unfortunately, Perl for Linux is not properly optimized and so Perl's <STDIN> is about four-times slower than it should be.

Now, if the analysis required building data structures whose complexity was a function of the size of the log file, then I'd definitely have doubts about being able to do the analysis easily in Perl without running out of swap space (and running at a snail's pace before failing due to excessive page faulting). (Perl has a strong preference to consuming RAM in order to improve execution speed.) But that seems a very unlikely type of analysis.

So I'd have a very strong preference for doing this stuff in Perl unless you can dig up a more concrete reason why Perl isn't appropriate. A terrabyte log file in itself isn't a reason to not use Perl.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")