best language to perform string operations

[IAMTubby]

Hello,
I frequently run into problems where I have to get some input from a text file, do some string operations on it, and then write it back to the file.
As of now, I am doing this in C, but I feel this is consuming too much of my time since I have to implement everything from scratch.

While it makes for very good learning, it's sometimes difficult when I'm in a hurry.

Which language would you advise me for this purpose.
Thanks.

[Vaphell]

What kind of string operations?
perl is the king of everything string related, python is ok too. Easy tasks can be done with awk, sed.

[IAMTubby]

perl is the king of everything string related, python is ok too. Easy tasks can be done with awk, sed.

Ok shall keep that in mind.[/quote]

What kind of string operations?

Mainly like, extracting a part of a string from a huge string.

[trent.josephsen]

Perl. It takes a bit of time to learn but it makes some things so easy.

Learning Perl is the best introductory programming text ever IMO, so if you get a book, make it that one.

[Bachstelze]

Perl is indeed the best language for text-related operations, but very often a one-liner shell script with the standard tools is enough.

[shawnhcorey]

Perl. Perl has the most advance regular expression engine. So advance that Python uses it too.

[Mikeb85]

Ruby or Perl. Ruby has all of Perl's regex features, many built-in methods you can perform on strings, and is quite user friendly too. It also has pattern matching, blocks, and other useful functions. I've heard Perl is very powerful for this kind of thing too, but I don't know it very well (just the Perl-inspired bits in Ruby).

[shawnhcorey]

Ruby or Perl. Ruby has all of Perl's regex features, many built-in methods you can perform on strings, and is quite user friendly too. It also has pattern matching, blocks, and other useful functions. I've heard Perl is very powerful for this kind of thing too, but I don't know it very well (just the Perl-inspired bits in Ruby).

FYI: Ruby also uses Perl's regular expression engine.

[machikakara]

I would like to know how important speed is when it comes to these string operations, or is it about how easy it is to edit this code.

[IAMTubby]

Thanks a lot for the replies. The unanimous answer sounds like Perl, I shall get a book and start learning. It will be very helpful for me.