Given that Priority Queues (heaps) are implemented by Heap::Simple, and Heap, the queuing portion of the task is mostly implemented for you already. You just have to handle the logic where order is only adjusted when something takes longer, but not when it takes shorter.

Reading in the flat files and splitting them into individual elements is also one of those things that Perl does easily.

And the Benchmark module, or Time::HiRes may be what you need for timing the execution of each entity.

So Perl definately provides the building blocks to you, through CPAN as well as built-in functionality. It starts you off a little further down the development road than C, for example, for a project like this.

That means that in programming efficiency, Perl is going to beat C on this particular type of project. But that doesn't mean it will be the winner based on execution speed. If raw speed is the goal, dust off your assembler and start bit-fiddling.

In amount of code, Perl is probably going to come out ahead; you're going to end up typing fewer lines of Perl to accomplish this than lines of C, especially since some of the groundwork is already done and available on CPAN.

As far as development efficiency, yes, Perl is starting you out further down the road toward "done", but if you don't know Perl, you have to also consider the learning curve.