Learning Perl/Tk

16.11. Atom Methods

Each widget is assigned a name, which is called an atom. The atom has a string name (you can get it for each widget by using the name method) and a 32-bit ID. These methods are used internally to handle things such as the selection mechanism.

To get the 32-bit ID for a given widget, send the name of the widget to the atom method:

$id = $widget->atom($widget->name());

You can do the opposite and use the ID to get the name of the atom back. To do so, use the atomname method:

$name = $widget->atomname($id);