For compressing files, I would have to recommend IO::Zlib. IO::Zlib provides a IO::Handle style interface for reading from and writing to zipped files. These files are compatible with gunzip on unix and are able to be decompressed by winzip as well.

I have used IO::Zlib (which is actually a front end to Compress::Zlib) very successfully under unix. I do not know what it would take to get it to run under windows though, but in theory it should be possible.

Additionally you will want to look at Archive::Tar. Archive::Tar will put all of the files into one common file, and if you have Compress::Zlib installed will compress them for you. If you save the files out with an extension of .tgz, winzip will be able to extract them (it can also do the .tar.gz extension but it is more of a hassle on win32 systems).

Again, I know that the libz libraries can work on windows, but it may be a bit of work to get them compiled.

my @a=qw(random brilliant braindead); print $a[rand(@a)];