By using zcat you can set up a pipeline to uncompress and extract the files from the archive as a stream without using temporary files or needing to hold everything in RAM.

On Linux the code looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $file = shift;

my $pipecmd = "zcat $file | tar  -O -xf -"; # -O, extract files to sta
+ndard output

open(my $PIPEIN, '-|', $pipecmd) or die "Opening pipe [$pipecmd]: $!\n
+";

while ( my $line = <$PIPEIN> )
{
    chomp $line;
    print "$line\n"; # do parsing here
}
[download]

A Windows version of gzip is available from The gzip home page. I'm not sure if the Win version includes zcat.

You'll need a Windows tar as well. I'm not sure if the pipe command will work in Windows.

This may need better handing of file not found and other errors from the pipe command, but it should get you started.

my $pipecmd = "zcat $file | tar  -O -xf -"; # -O, extract files to standard output

Your tar may even have support for uncompressing built in, look for the tar option "-Z" for uncompress and "-z" for unzip.