use Archive::Extract;

    ### build an Archive::Extract object ###
    my $ae = Archive::Extract->new( archive => 'foo.tgz' );

    ### extract to /tmp directory ###
    my $ok = $ae->extract( to => '/tmp' ) 
             or die $ae->error;

    ### get files from the archive ###
    my $files   = $ae->files;
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If you're doing more than just extraction then look at Archive::Zip