This question got me thinking how to do it in windows. Im not sure what platform you are using, but here is how I got it working on Win2000. I use the popular WinZip program to create the files. I first tried using something like system($cmd,"args") but could not get it to work.

Doing some searching, I found the Win32::Process module. This is my first attempt and a quick hack using this module but it is tested and working.

Winzip expects filenames to be passed with complete paths and quoted to support long file names: "c:\mypath\to\my\Cool Archive.zip"

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# Using WinZip to zip files up on Windows machine.
use strict;
use Win32;
use Win32::Process;

my $cmd         = "C:\\Program Files\\WinZip\\winzip32.exe";
my $rootdir      = "c:\\Documents and Settings\\bch\\My Documents";
my $filename     = '"c:\\Documents and Settings\\bch\\My Documents\\te
+starchive.zip"';

my @files     = ('got milk.jpg','kellogs.jpg','gravity.jpg','Resume.do
+c');

for my $x (0..(@files-1)) {
    $files[$x] = qq["$rootdir\\$files[$x]"];        
}    

sub print_error() {
    return Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );
}    

Win32::Process::Create(my $processobj,
    "$cmd",
    "winzip32 -min -a $filename @files",
    0,
    DETACHED_PROCESS,
    ".") or print_error();
[download]

Help this helps!
zzspectrez