Don't feel too bad, the HList widget is a hard to understand beast. :-)

To give you a heads up, try to look at the HList indices as places to display your data, NOT store your data. The data should be stored in some other hash or array, and the HList is just used to display them. Similar in idea to the Model-View-Controller MVC concepts of modern gui's like gtk+.

Here is a little example that should teach you alot about what happens internally with the HList indices counter.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Tk;
use Tk::HList;

my $mw = MainWindow->new();

#create some sample data
my %data;

foreach (0..100) {
      $data{$_}{'name'} = 'name'.$_;
      $data{$_}{'id'} =   rand(time);
      $data{$_}{'priority'} =  int rand 50;
}
#get random list of keys
my @keys = keys %data; 

#################

my $h = $mw->Scrolled( 'HList', 
                       -header => 1,
                       -columns => 3,
                       -width => 40,
                       -height => 40,
                       -takefocus => 1,
                       -background => 'steelblue',
                   -foreground =>'snow',
               -selectmode => 'single',
                       -selectforeground => 'pink',
                       -selectbackground => 'black',
                #       -browsecmd => \&browseThis,
                   )->pack(-side => "left", -anchor => "n");

$h->header('create', 0, -text => '   Name  ',
                        -borderwidth => 3,
                        -headerbackground => 'steelblue',
            -relief => 'raised');

$h->header('create', 1, -text => '      ID      ',
                        -borderwidth => 3,
                        -headerbackground => 'lightsteelblue',
                    -relief => 'raised');

$h->header('create', 2, -text => '  Priority  ',
                        -borderwidth => 3,
                        -headerbackground => 'lightgreen',
                    -relief => 'raised');


foreach (@keys) {
     my $e = $h->addchild(""); #will add at end
        
     $h->itemCreate ($e, 0,
           -itemtype => 'text',
           -text => $data{$_}{'name'},
            );
                        
     $h->itemCreate($e, 1,
           -itemtype => 'text',
           -text => $data{$_}{'id'},
         );

     $h->itemCreate($e, 2,
           -itemtype => 'text',
           -text => $data{$_}{'priority'},
         );

}

my $button = $mw->Button(-text => 'exit',
                         -command => sub{exit})->pack;

my $sortid = $mw->Button(-text => 'Sort by Id',
                         -command => [\&sort_me,1] )->pack;

my $sortpriority = $mw->Button(-text => 'Sort by Priority',
                         -command => [\&sort_me,2] )->pack;


$mw->Button(-text => 'Add Long String',
                         -command => [\&longadd] )->pack;


MainLoop;
#########################################################

sub longadd{
     my $e = $h->addchild(""); #will add at end
        
     $h->itemCreate ($e, 0,
           -itemtype => 'text',
           -text => 'longname',
            );
                        
     $h->itemCreate($e, 1,
           -itemtype => 'text',
           -text => time.time.time,
         );

     $h->itemCreate($e, 2,
           -itemtype => 'text',
           -text => 5,
         );



}

sub sort_me{
  my $col = shift;

  my @entries = $h->info('children');
  my @to_be_sorted =();

 foreach my $entry(@entries){
           push @to_be_sorted,
       [ $h->itemCget($entry,0,'text'),
         $h->itemCget($entry,1,'text'),
         $h->itemCget($entry,2,'text'),
       ];
           }

  my @sorted = sort{ $a->[$col] cmp $b->[$col]  || #primary sort ascii
                     $a->[1] <=> $b->[1]           #secondary sort num
+eric
                       } @to_be_sorted;
            
my $entry = 0;
  foreach my $aref (@sorted){
#    print $aref->[0],' ',$aref->[1],' ',$aref->[1],"\n";
    $h->itemConfigure( $entry, 0, 'text' => $aref->[0] );  
    $h->itemConfigure( $entry, 1, 'text' => $aref->[1] ); 
    $h->itemConfigure( $entry, 2, 'text' => $aref->[2] ); 
    $entry++;
  }

$mw->update;
}
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