Programmers: what language to use/learn for this project?

[CallMeIshmael]

Alright, I have this idea for a project I'd like to work on that involves a lot of interaction w/ websites. Basically, I will need to go to a bunch of different sites and perform some group of actions (inputing a username or other text info, browsing through a few pages, downloading info, etc).

I would like to be able to do this without actually going to the websites through a typical browswer, and actually write into the program the ability to connect with a site, scan it and input information.


Programming background: good with C/C++, and some of the more stat oriented languages (matlab and R type things). But, just about all of my C/C++ experience is related to more simulation/math type things, with a bit of win32 stuff, so I have no idea where to start doing this in C++.


What language would be good here? Im assuming its probably a choice between C++ or Java? I have no Java experience, though I imagine that w/ the C++ knowledge I could learn it in decent time, and Im in no immediate rush here. I did a tad of research, and it appears that stuff like the URL/URLConnection classes might be a step in the right direction, but I really have no idea. Obviously Im sure this *could* be done in C++, but if a lot of the leg work is already done in the java library (or some other language) it would make sense to go that way.


Obviously, if there is some other language that makes the task easy, Im more than open to suggestions. Though, the task would also require a fair amount of math, where speed is fairly important, so the language would have to be able to handle that as well.