in reply to multiple selection in a Perl/Tk HList

Are you talking about a hash table? There is no proximity relationship among the keys of hash table, so "next to each other" would be undefined. You can use hash slices to select the values corresponding to multiple keys; e.g.

@ids{qw( Ann Bert Chuck )}
returns a list of the values in the hash %ids corresponding to Ann, Bert, and Chuck. Is this what you are looking for?

the lowliest monk