in reply to Populating the form

Then you would use HTML::Defaultify like so: 

$output = "<html> <head> <title>name</title> </head> <body> <form name
+=formName action="cgibin/name1.pl" method="POST"> 
my name is: <input type="text" name="text1" size="15"> 

My lastName is: <input type="text" name="text2" size=15> </form> </bod
+y> </html>"

$def_output = defaultify($output,
                         text1 => "John Smith",
                         text2 => "Smith"
                         }

[download]
Then $def_output would contain your code, with the proper value= tags set.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom