in reply to New to Perl - is it a better language than VB for this application?
G'day DyslexicHobo,
Welcome to the monastery.
I've coded those sorts of tasks in Perl so it's certainly possible to do; I can't make any claims about whether it will be faster.
For various tasks, you'll find there's different modules for *.xls and *.xlsx spreadsheets, e.g. Spreadsheet::ParseExcel (for the reading the older format) and Spreadsheet::XLSX (for the newer format).
There's a tutorial (with a lot of follow-up information) that may address many of your initial questions: Using Win32::OLE and Excel - Tips and Tricks.
-- Ken
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