Here is a shell script, it assumes your directory list is in a file called dirlist which can be changed easily.

#!/bin/sh
date=`date +%d%m%Y`
for x in `cat dirlist`
do
y=`basename $x`
tar zcvf $y-${date}.tar.gz $x
done
[download]

The same basic structure can be rewritten in perl or you can go the whole Archive::Tar route and really make it complex:D

Good luck

Or, without a static list file:

#!/bin/sh
date=`date +%d%m%Y`
for x in $*              <---- here's the only change needed!
do
y=`basename $x`
tar czvf $y-${date}.tar.gz $x
done
[download]

You could even make this a shell function in your .bash_profile or .bashrc, like so:

function maketar
{
    date=`date +%d%m%Y`
    for x in $* ; do
        y=`basename $x`
        tar czvf $y-${date}.tar.gz $x
    done
}
export -f maketar
[download]

There's (wait for it!) "More Than One Way To Do It." Even before you get into doing it in Perl. :)

Any reason why this must be done in Perl? A simple shell script should do the job quite nicely.

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

No reason i guess, i have never wrote a shell script before tho :(

While there are some complex things you could do with it, for this problem, you shouldn't need much more than writing out the same commands you would give on a command line, plus a few variables.

#!/bin/sh
date=`date +%Y%m%d%k%M%S`
path=$1    # Path to use is given on the command line

# Use last directory in ${path} as the filename to save 
# to.  (Could use awk or something else here, but I'm 
# more familer with Perl).
# 
save_file=`perl -e '$file=pop; $file=~m!/(.*)$!; print $1' ${path}`

tar -zxf ${save_file}-${date}.tar.gz ${path}
[download]

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated