I incorporated BlueLine's suggestion into an existing subroutine I use to read tar.gz files.

my $gunzip = "/usr/bin/gunzip -c"; # Location of gunzip;
my $Zopen = "/bin/zcat $FILENAME | /bin/tar -xvf";
my $READ;

sub FancyFopen {
    my ($FILENAME) = @_;

#  my $Fhandle= new FileHandle;
        
    if (-s $FILENAME){ $READ="/bin/cat";}
    elsif(-s $FILENAME.".gz"){
        $READ=$GUNZIP;
        $FILENAME=$FILENAME.".gz";}
    elsif (-s $FILENAME."tar.Z"){
        $READ=$Zopen;
        $FILENAME=$FILENAME."tar.Z";}
    else {
        print "Cannot open \"$FILENAME\*\" for gunzip input\n";
    }
    open(Fhandle,"$READ $FILENAME |") || 
        print "Cannot open \"$FILENAME\" for input\n";
    
    return Fhandle;
}
[download]

HTH,

Steve