in reply to Streaming Compression

Try gz, here's why: 
2;0 juerd@ouranos:~/tmp$ echo -n 'Hello, ' | gzip -c > test.gz
2;0 juerd@ouranos:~/tmp$ echo 'World!' | gzip -c >> test.gz
2;0 juerd@ouranos:~/tmp$ zcat test.gz
Hello, World!

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Update
crazyinsomniac wanted me not to post anything *nix-centric or not about Perl.
So here goes:
Try $a_streamable_compression_method, here's why: 
use Some::Module;
$scalar = compress("Hello, ");
$scalar .= compress("World!\n");
print uncompress($scalar); # Hello, World!\n

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On CPAN, there are several gzip-capable modules.
2;0 juerd@ouranos:~$ perl -e'undef christmas'
Segmentation fault
2;139 juerd@ouranos:~$

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