I'm trying to learn Perl via the Learning Perl/Tk book published by O"Reilly. There's a nifty little color changer program on page 95, this is where I started. The program has evolved some and mostly works however I have a problem that has hounded me for too long. Changing the background color is okay using fixed names such as purple3. Here's the problem: When I invoke the following: 
      $rb_value = "purple3"
      ($red, $green, $blue) = $widget->rgb($rb_value);

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I expect to get three decimal numbers between 0 and 255 as stated on page 293. What I get are three numbers much larger than anticipated. for purple3, I get 32125, 9766, 52685. WHY? I'd like to use the results to reset some rgb sliders I use to display specific colors. HELP. I tried dividing the large numbers by 256 and that gets me close and even correct once in a while, but it isn't the right solution. Sorry for the lengthy dialog.

2001-03-27 Edit by Corion : Added CODE tags. And it's a monolog(ue), not a dialog(ue).

In reply to What's up with the RGB method? by Anonymous Monk

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