If you're using the CGI.pm shortcuts (and why shouldn't you?), you can set the default value using the param method:

use CGI qw/:all/;

...

my $previous_value = "This is what I wrote before"; # fetch this someh
+ow
param('story', $previous_value); # sets default to previous
...
print textarea('story'); # prints an input form element, defaulting to
+ previous value for  it
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look at the value attribute for text input tags => print "<input type='text' name='bar' value='$bar'>\n";, where $bar is a perl variable containing the value from the DB. Be sure to escape quotes, or risk producing broken HTML. For textareas, all you need to do is put the value in between the opening and closing tag, like so:

<textarea name="foo" rows=5 cols=80>
$foo</textarea>
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