Text processing - Python vs Perl performance

Here is my Perl and Python script to do some simple text processing from about 21 log files, each about 300 KB to 1 MB (maximum) x 5 times repeated (total of 125 files, due to the log repeated 5 times).

Python Code (code modified to use compiled re and using re.I)

#!/usr/bin/python

import re
import fileinput

exists_re = re.compile(r'^(.*?) INFO.*Such a record already exists', re.I)
location_re = re.compile(r'^AwbLocation (.*?) insert into', re.I)

for line in fileinput.input():
    fn = fileinput.filename()
    currline = line.rstrip()

    mprev = exists_re.search(currline)

    if(mprev):
        xlogtime = mprev.group(1)

    mcurr = location_re.search(currline)

    if(mcurr):
        print fn, xlogtime, mcurr.group(1)

Perl Code

#!/usr/bin/perl

while (<>) {
    chomp;

    if (m/^(.*?) INFO.*Such a record already exists/i) {
        $xlogtime = $1;
    }

    if (m/^AwbLocation (.*?) insert into/i) {
        print "$ARGV $xlogtime $1\n";
    }
}

And, on my PC both code generates exactly the same result file of 10,790 lines. And, here is the timing done on Cygwin's Perl and Python implementations.

User@UserHP /cygdrive/d/tmp/Clipboard
# time /tmp/scripts/python/afs/process_file.py *log* *log* *log* *log* *log* >
summarypy.log

real    0m8.185s
user    0m8.018s
sys     0m0.092s

User@UserHP /cygdrive/d/tmp/Clipboard
# time /tmp/scripts/python/afs/process_file.pl *log* *log* *log* *log* *log* >
summarypl.log

real    0m1.481s
user    0m1.294s
sys     0m0.124s

Originally, it took 10.2 seconds using Python and only 1.9 secs using Perl for this simple text processing.

(UPDATE) but, after the compiled re version of Python, it now takes 8.2 seconds in Python and 1.5 seconds in Perl. Still Perl is much faster.

Is there a w