in reply to Checkbutton -text

Use an array instead of multiple $out_reqN variables with the index in their name.

Also, -text doesn't expect a reference, but a normal string.

... my @out_req = ( '1. Carpet Plot Data', "2. Laminate Properties", "3. Laminate Stresses", "4. Laminate Strains", "5. Circumferential and Radial Stresses/Strains", "6. Displacements", "7. Strains Per Ply", "8. Stresses Per Ply", "9. Failure Criteria Per Ply", "10. Automatic Search for Failure", ); for my $label (@out_req) { $chk_{$n} = $out_req_frm -> Checkbutton(-text=> $label, ... }

%chk / %chk_ would also more naturally be arrays (not hashes), as the index $n is just a counter.

See perldata and perldsc.