There is the Archive::Zip I think I can use with Perl 5.10 but I don't know how.
I don't want to read or write any files, just zip something in memory, with best compression, like

$text = "this is a test";
$zippedtext = &Zip($text);

sub Zip {
my $zip = Archive::Zip->new();
# help needed here
return ...
}

I guess it's only a few lines.

Thanks in advance.

0 members found this post helpful.

Well, this links to memory mapped files, but all I want to do is just call the Compress method from the zip library. That's pretty easy in C so I thought it might be possible also with Perl.

The point is I don't need all that extra information which is included in a typical zip file, such as file size and name etc.

If I do something like

my $zip = Archive::Zip->new();
my $member = $zip->addString($text, $filename);
$member->desiredCompressionMethod(COMPRESSION_DEFLATED);

how can I access the zipped member and is it possible to get rid of the $filename stuff?

Found what I was looking for in a different module:

use Compress::Raw::Zlib;

sub Zip {
my ($d, $status) = new Compress::Raw::Zlib:: Deflate( -Level => Z_BEST_COMPRESSION );
my $result;
my $status = $d->deflate(shift, $result);
die "deflation failed\n" unless $status == Z_OK;

$status = $d->flush($result) ;
die "deflation failed\n" unless $status == Z_OK;

$result;
}