Cgi::compress::gzip extends the cgi module to auto-detect whether the client browser wants compressed output and, if so and if the script chooses html output, apply gzip compression on any content header for stdout. cgi::compress::gzip is intended to be a drop-in replacement for cgi.pm.

apache mod_perl users may wish to consider the apache::compress or apache::gzipchain modules, which allow more transparent output compression than this module can provide. however, as of this writing those modules are more aggressive about compressing, regardless of content-type.