editing a prompt

[Christopher Moore]

Hello,
I'm trying to write a script where the user can edit a prompt. An example
might be to rename a file and prompt with the existing filename (like in
winblows explorer).  

The simple commands look like:
echo -n "$PROMPT"; read p

The problem is that the read command won't recognize $PROMPT as input even
though it prinits on the same line.  

Any ideas?

Thanks
Chris