yes, that does make it work, but I'm using textvariable so that I can change the text dynamically. Assigning textvariable to a reference to a scalar makes for very messy programming. Is there a way to reference it to an array element that will work?

I find that if I define @status_label up top, the value of $status_label[0] still doesn't update in the label.

Perhaps this is a subtlety with MainLoop?

Peter