Forgive me my question, I know about nothing of Tk, but if you already use a RegEx, why don't you let it do all the work for you? Something like this 
#!perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $string = "I don't know what to do ** when I do this";
if ($string =~ /(.*?\*\*.*?)(\b[a-zA-Z']+\b)/) {
   print "Match <$2> at offset " . length($1) . $/;
} else {
   print "No match" . $/;
}
my @chars = (split //, $2);
@chars = @chars[0..9] if (@chars > 10);
print join(' - ', @chars) . $/;
__END__
OUTPUT:
Match <when> at offset 27
w - h - e - n

[download]
should in my eyes work if $string contained the contents of the text field.
But again, I hardly know any Tk, and if there should be any problem with the code above, I'd be happy if you pointed me to it.

In reply to Re: Regex and loop question by CombatSquirrel
in thread Regex and loop question by perl_seeker

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