Zip a variable?

ecuguru has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Do any zip libraries exist that can zip the contents of a variable, not just a file? I have a function that outputs the contents of a variable that has pre-formatted data in it like so:

print <<"CSV";
Content-Type: application/dat; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="$fileName"\n
$csvFile
CSV
}
[download]

Works great, but I'd like to zip the 'file' before I send it to the user. I guess I could dump the contents of the variable to a temp file, zip the temp file, then send the whole file to the user, but it seems inefficent.

Is it possible to zip the contents of the variable and output a zipped variable to the user pretending to be a zip file?
Thanks!
Answer and more detail found here

Comment on Zip a variable? Download Code

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Re: Zip a variable? by svenXY (Deacon) on Jan 13, 2006 at 10:51 UTC
Hi, I found this: `Zip contents in a scalar ^ Q: I want to read a Zip file from (or write one to) a scalar variable +instead of a file. How can I do this? A: Use IO::Scalar and the readFromFileHandle() and writeToFileHandle() + methods. See examples/readScalar.pl and examples/writeScalar.pl.` [download] in the documentation for Archive::Zip Is this what you are after? Regards, svenXY	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Zip a variable? by ecuguru (Monk) on Jan 13, 2006 at 10:55 UTC
Yes, and much appreciated. I tried to search the help forums for the wrong wording, found it, then tried to reap this request. Thanks!	[reply]
Re: Zip a variable? by CountOrlok (Friar) on Jan 13, 2006 at 15:21 UTC
Archive::Zip has a method named AddString that would do what you want. -imran	[reply]