All the text in this area ...
--#--
The <i>&lt;textarea&gt;</i> input field is slightly different, but 
still an easy fix. There is one small requirement in this code: the 
HTML form must contain a closing <i>&lt;/textarea&gt;</i> tag. The 
code can probably be modified to work around that requirement, but 
I haven't done it yet.<br>
<br>
<code>
@tas = getTextAreas($html_file);
foreach (@tas) {
	$val = $query->param($_);
	$html_file =~ 
		s/(<textarea[^>]*name="?$_[^>]*>)([\w\-\s]*)(<\/textarea>)/$1$val$3/is;
}

sub getTextAreas {
	my($html) = @_;
	my @t = ();
	my @areas = split(/<textarea/i, $html);
	for (1..@areas - 1) {
		if ($areas[$_] =~ /name="?([\-\w]*)"?\s+/i) {
			push(@t, $1);
		}
	}
	return @t;
}
</code>
<br>
Note in the substitution string that an characters or spaces
<i>([\w\-\s]*)</i> inside the textarea are parenthesized. But there 
is no <i>$2</i> in the substitution string. It's been replaced by 
the value <i>($val)</i> passed. If the textarea were prefilled, the
data has either been replaced by the user, or the original pre-fill 
is in the data passed.<br>