prefilling keyboard buffer

[greno]

How can the keyboard buffer be prefilled with an answer for a read command?
I want to prompt the user with a question using the read command and then
suggest an answer that they could backspace over and change if necessary.  
example:
[code] read -p "Please enter quantity: " qty [/code]
Please enter quantity: 27   # this is what I want the user to see and they
could backspace over the 27 and enter another number if necessary.
I've tried echoing characters out to /dev/tty but you cannot backspace over
these and they are not present in the answer variable from the user.  And
yes I know you can use selects and other methods but that is not what I
want.  I want this method to work.

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