Trillian log program

[juldea]

I want to write a program. I am going to need some help.

So, I use the chat program Trillian at home and at work. Trillian automatically logs conversations for you, which I find to be a very very good thing. However, I am left with a log from home and a log from work... and I'd like to combine them.

Trillian log files are formatted like this:

Session Start (AIM - juldea:RovingFun): Wed Jun 09 16:28:40 2004
[04:28:40] RovingFun: Yar.
[04:31:03] Juldea: *licks your eyeballs*
[04:31:18] RovingFun: ...whoa.
Session Close (RovingFun): Wed Jun 09 17:05:50 2004

So, I'd like to write a program that takes two of these files (either input by me, or the program itself finds the two files that have the same username), filters through them looking for "Session Start" dates, takes the clump of text (string?) between a "Session Start" and a "Session End", and then sorts those strings based on the start dates. Voila, I have one chronologically sorted log file instead of two.

So... This doesn't seem too difficult. I really want to learn what's necessary to write it myself. I took a Java course in college and was really good at it, but it was years ago and I haven't touched anything since then.

What do people suggest? londo said that if he were to write it, he'd do it in Perl, but that's because he, "loves the Perl." I don't know a thing about Perl... but I've heard multiple times from codin' friends that once you get the basics of one language, the others come fairly easily.

Also - and here's where I'm going to sound like a complete n00b - don't I need a compiler? an interpreter? to write code? In the class I took, everything was provided for us...

I am excited about this. My brain has withered for too long!