Actually, it's more of a problem using flatfiles. The most common method Perl scripts use to achieve cross platform viability is by using flat datafiles without any *real* idea of how to optimize for speed (such as disk-based hash tables would be faster than data files used by UBB at the moment). When you use a database back end such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, etc., a lot of loading data problems that occur with flat files disappear as the SQL server is now responsible for that.
Case in point -
http://www.qasic.net is all Perl based BUT it uses no flatfiles. Everything is driven from a MySQL backend and my host has yet to complain about server load.
Hope this helps.
qasic
