Your script doesn't do anything. First, you didn't declare $cmd. That should be my $cmd = . Second, "zcat *gz": What do you want it to do? Did you have an option in mind? More information there would be helpful. Third, since you're running system commands, you'll need to use perl's "system" command. The print command would come after that. Hence, 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $cmd = system("zcat -l /path/to/.gz/files");
print Dumper($cmd);

[download]

In reply to Re: How would you do this? by Khen1950fx
in thread How would you do this? by david_lyon

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.