What code are you using to read user input? Using <STDIN>, usually only the arrow characters give ^[[A on my system.

The modules mentioned above can be useful, and Term::UI::History might be worth looking at.

A simple method of recording history might be to just push the input to an array, for example:

#!/usr/bin/perl 
use strict;
use warnings;

my @history;
my $text;
my $x;

print STDERR "Enter text ('q' to quit): ";
$text = <STDIN>;
chomp $text;
push (@history, "$text\n");

while ($text ne 'q')
    {
        print STDERR "Enter text ('q' to quit): ";
        $text = <STDIN>;
        chomp $text;
        push (@history, "$text\n");
    }

my $numberOfHistoryItems = @history;

print STDERR "For history, press 'h', else quit:";
my $history = <STDIN>;
chomp $history;

if ($history eq "h")
    {
        for($x = 0; $x < $numberOfHistoryItems; $x += 1)
            {
                print STDOUT "$history[$x]" if $numberOfHistoryItems >
+0;

            }
        print STDOUT "No history items\n" if $numberOfHistoryItems == 
+0;
    }
[download]

Although admittedly, that might get tedious and unwieldy if your script is long.

-Michael