Depending on what the task is, SPITBOL/SNOBOL just may be a better fit than Perl. And since your shop has a lot of SPITBOL experience, that makes it even more likely to be the better choice. Why not run your own benchmark with some "typical" task, measuring both development and execution time? If you're really ambitious, write a Inline::SNOBOL module, and get the best of both worlds :-)