i'm trying to open and read a .gz file.....any ideas on how to do this?

Try

  my $file = "file.gz";
  open(IN, "gzcat $file |") or die "gunzip $file: $!";
  while ( <IN> ) {
      ...
  }
  close(IN);
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See perldoc -f open for more details.

You might want to specify the full patch to gzcat if there's a possibility that someone might sneak a trojan horse into your PATH.

Update: s/gunzip/gzcat/