Hrm, why arent you using regexes? I'm no master, but I think this will help:
m|\*\*(\w+)\b|g If you have all the text in a scalar, you can do this: 
while($text =~ m|\*\*(\w+)\b|g) {
    print "Found: " , $1 , "\n";
}

[download]
Is this what you want? Or was there some reason you're using TK's functions??

HTH

Update: explanation of regex 
m|
 \*     #literal asterisk
 \*     #ditto
 (      #start capture
 \w+    #one or more word characters aka [A-Za-z0-9_]
 )      #end capture
 \b     #word boundary
|gx     #/x allows whitespace, /g makes it global (restart from last m
+atch position in this case)

[download]
In case you're not familar with regexes, run this: perldoc perlretut :)

mhoward - at - hattmoward.org

In reply to Re: Tk text widget indices. by meredith
in thread Tk text widget indices. by perl_seeker

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.