Greetings: I am new to PERL (1 year) but even newer to TK (1 week or so). Here is my problem...... I have a PERL program that creates a nice window, adds some radio buttons, a status Label widget, and a 'go' Button. What I am wanting to do -- when the 'go' Button is clicked, the program will disable the radio buttons, get the directory listing from differnt directories, and update the Label widget with the number of files found. What happens is the main window freezes until the all the directories have been parsed. Note the code snippet below has a lot of the overhead removed. I don't think it will run on its own. Sorry if it is forbidden to post unworking code. I just wanted everyone to see the setup.

use Tk;


# TK Setup
#Window Creation
$main = MainWindow -> new();    #Create Main Window Object
$main -> minsize(qw(500 250));    #Size window
$main -> configure(-background => 'blue');#Set Background Color


#add go button
$button_1 = $main -> Button(-text => "GO",
                            -padx => 25,
                -foreground => "white", 
                -background => "green",
                -command => \&go)-> pack(-side => 'bottom', -anchor =>
+ 's', expand => 'yes');
                            
                            
#Add main center frame 
$left_3 = $main -> Frame(-relief => 'groove', 
                         -borderwidth => 3, 
                         -background => 'blue')-> pack(-side => 'botto
+m',-anchor => 'n', -fill => 'x');

#added buttons to the frames (removed for this)

#add label to center frame 
$label_3 = $left_3 -> Label(-text => "Status", 
                            -background => 'blue', 
                -relief => 'raised', 
                -borderwidth => 3,
                -foreground => 'white')->pack(-fill => 'x', -anchor =>
+ 'w', expand => 1);                        
$text = $left_3->Label(-textvariable => \$var)->pack(-anchor => ‘w’); 
+                                     
MainLoop();


sub go
{
    #freeze the selections
    for $i (1..6){$check_button[$i] -> configure(-state => 'disabled')
+;}
    
        
        
    # get info from dictionary files
    while(($folder, $drive) = each %search_locations)
    {
        #get list of files in directory
        
        $var = "Looking in - $drive/DICT/SOURCE\n";
        chdir "$drive/variable/DICT/SOURCE";
        @file_list = glob ("*.dsf");
        $var = “Num of files: $#file_list”;
    }
}
[download]

I hope this makes sense. What I am wanting is for $var to change in the Label widget as the program processes the while loop. Some other notes, the directories are large (>1000 files). To me, it seems the program is hung during the glob function. The only time the main window updates is when the while loop is complete. Thoughts? keep in mind..newbie here...so.. be nice with the criticism....

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