Just a quick addendum to the fine answers given above...

I think it would have been helpful for you to try to eliminate the Tk aspect, at which point you may have spotted that the problem was (as Perl told you) a basic syntax error, and nothing to do with Tk itself. As you knew that the error was in line 17, cutting and pasting the relevant code portion into another file (or simply commenting out the surrounding bits) would have given you...

my @buttons = ( '9','8','7','6','5','4','3','2','1','0');
for (my $i = 9; $i >= 0; $i--) 
{
    my $button{$i} = $buttons[$i]; # for instance
}
[download]

...which would produce the same syntax error, but would be easier to disect. In addition, playing with just this portion of the code may give you ideas on other ways of producing the results you require. (For instance, it's possible to eliminate the @buttons array completely, should you wish...)

Cheers,
Ben.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.