Thanks a lot for your help. I used Term::ReadLine and got it working. I found the documentation a little lacking and it took me a little while to get it to work, so for everyone's future reference here is how I got it to work: 
use Term::ReadLine;

my $record = { name  => ‘joe bloogs’,
               age   => 34,
               hobby => ‘chess’,
             };

my $term-> new Term::ReadLine 'user input';
for my $property ( keys %$record ) {
  my $response = $term->readline($property,$record->{$property});
  $record->{$property} = $response;
}

[download]
I know that looks - and is - simple but it took a while for me to find the right call. Thanks again for your help

In reply to Re^2: adding default text to STDIN by bangers
in thread adding default text to STDIN by bangers

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