Let this be a lesson to you all:

Do not assume that because you write it in C, it will be faster. Do not assume that because you write it in C, it will be better. Do not assume that C is in any way The Right Tool for text processing. I'm going to be attempting to slowly rewrite the tool which I'm working with because half of the damn thing is written in shell, and the other half is in C, when a good, integrated solution would be in Perl, or even Python, or, gods forbid, Java.

I hate these people so much. Only the fact that their tool works prevents their untimely demise.