Now I have adjusted my code to reflect those suggestions but I am still getting errors and some look to be out of my control. The documentation for compress::zlib suggests that gzreadline and not gzread is the thing to use...Here's what I have:

use Compress::Zlib;
my $gz = gzopen("$system_config{sendmail_log_dir}$_") || warn "Could n
+ot open $system_config{sendmail_log_dir}$_ for reading: $!\n";
my $line;
while($gz->gzreadline($line)) {
    push (@logfile_contents,$line);
}
$gz->gzclose();
[download]

Here are my errors:
Use of uninitialized value in subroutine entry at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/i386-linux/Compress/Zlib.pm line 118.

Could not open /home/mjn/perl/logscanner/maillog.2.gz for reading: Bad file descriptor

Can't call method "gzreadline" without a package or object reference at ./logscanner.pl line 36.

Input would be great! Thanks.
_____________________
mjn