As a side note, this application also needs to do some string processing and perl is really terrible for that. I hadn't noticed that ever before, but looping over a string in various directions is just so much easier in C.
perl has its downsides, but not being good at string processing isn't usually included in that list. arguably, perl's greatest strength is string processing. could you elaborate on what kind of string processing tasks you find easier to do in C than in perl? are you maybe just not familiar with the wonderful world of regular expressions that perl puts at your fingertips?