If your programmers are gonna roll their own C scripts for handling CGI don't let them. Perl already has a very nice CGI module which handles all of that. Perl takes care of all the memory allocation for you if you write the code in C and don't dynamically allocate memory you leave yourself open to segfaulting or worse buffer-overflow attacks. Also Perl's powerful built-in pattern matching gives you the tools you need to do data-validation. String processing in C is a nightmare unless you're using libraries which handle all of the nastiness.

Perl gives you a language with a feature set which supports the things you need to do text-processing well. It also takes care of most of the niggly details you need to worry about when writing C code. C is great when you need speed, or low level access. Perl's pattern-matching is highly optimized and probably faster than anything someone would write in C without spending countless hours on optimization. Development time in Perl would be quicker if you have a decent Perl coder. You don't need low-level access you need good text-processing capabilities which is one of the things Perl excels at.

vroom | Tim Vroom | vroom@cs.hope.edu