[12AX7]

Hi All,
I was wondering, if I want to collect information from hand histories, what's the best language to do it with?

Since the is PC based, I'll have to learn the language from scratch, so bear that in mind.

Also, anyone know how these real time analyzers like PokerSpy get thier data?

I was thinking, just as a test, to write something that would show me the two cards I have to run to the hand history to see. So I'd need a way to do that in real time, or at least as soon as the data is available in the hand history file.

Being unfamiliar with PC/Windows API's I'm not sure what's out there. (Mainframe guy here.)

I was thinking Perl is the way to go, but not really sure what else there is.