Besides confuse you? heh heh . Seriously, I'm not the expert on it, but it is an array dereference. The part in brackets {..} represent an hashref ( a hash reference), which is how stuff is stored in an object. The @ part tells it that the hashref is an array, and needs an array to put it in for display. Google for Perl Dereferencing for alot of tutorials and explanations.

As to your other question, how to get the n'th column from any row selected in the HList widget, this recently posted script shows the way.

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

$top = new MainWindow;

$hlist = $top->Scrolled("HList",
   -header => 1,
   -columns => 4,
   -scrollbars => 'osoe',
   -command => sub{print 1},
   -width => 70,
   -selectbackground => 'SeaGreen3',
   -browsecmd => \&browseThis,
         )->pack(-expand => 1, -fill => 'both');

$hlist->header('create', 0, -text => 'From');
$hlist->header('create', 1, -text => 'Subject');
$hlist->header('create', 2, -text => 'Date');
$hlist->header('create', 3, -text => 'Size');

$hlist->add(0);
$hlist->itemCreate(0, 0, -text => "eserte\@cs.tu-berlin.de");
$hlist->itemCreate(0, 1, -text => "Re: HList?");
$hlist->itemCreate(0, 2, -text => "1999-11-20");
$hlist->itemCreate(0, 3, -text => "1432");

$hlist->add(1);
$hlist->itemCreate(1, 0, -text => "dummy\@foo.com");
$hlist->itemCreate(1, 1, -text => "Re: HList?");
$hlist->itemCreate(1, 2, -text => "1999-11-21");
$hlist->itemCreate(1, 3, -text => "2335");


MainLoop;

sub browseThis{
     for my $column (0..3){
       print $hlist->itemCget( $hlist->selectionGet, $column, 'text' )
+, "\n";
     }
}


=head1

  my $listArrayRef = [];

  my @selectedindices = $hlist->info('selection');

  foreach my $r (@selectedindices) {
     push @{$listArrayRef}, getRowArrayRef($hlist, $r);
     print Dump(@{$listArrayRef}),"\n";
   }

  sub getRowArrayRef {
    my ($hlist, $r) = @_;
    my @row;
   foreach my $c  (0 .. $hlist->cget(-columns) -1) {
     push @row, $hlist->itemCget($r, $c, '-text');
   } 
   return \@row;
  }    

}
=cut
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