Your wrong I did read that tutorial and your right I completely ignored it. With these changes I can run the standalone .pl file or the .exe file in any location. Thanks

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use Archive::Zip;
use Archive::Zip::MemberRead;


if ( open FH,"data.txt" ) {
    print "using normal data.txt file\n";
    while ( <FH> ) { print $_; }
} else {

    my $zip = PAR::par_handle($0); 
    my $fh  = new Archive::Zip::MemberRead($zip, "data.txt");
    print "using packed data.txt file\n";
    while ( defined( my $line = $fh->getline()) ) { 
        print "$line\n";
    }
    print "\nOr another way\n";
    my $content = PAR::read_file('data.txt');
    print $content;
}
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