Do YOU use CodeIgniter's form helpers?

[eluser]Calvin Froedge[/eluser]
The form helpers seem very strange to me. Namely, I'm not sure what the point of using PHP to generate simple inputs is. Also, is there a way to get the form helpers to prepopulate database values to their fields ONLY when no data is present in the post array? Right now I'm using an array to generate inputs:

$coupon_name = array(
'name' => 'coupon_name',
'id' => 'coupon_name',
'class'=> 'text',
'value' => set_value('coupon_name'),
'maxlength' => 30,
'size' => 30,
);

And then...

echo form_label($this->lang->line('coupons_form-add-coupon-label-coupon-name'), 'coupon_name');
echo form_input($coupon_name);

Why is this better than (this code not tested yet...just example)...

<label for="coupon_name">&lt;?php echo $this->lang->line('coupons_form-add-coupon-label-coupon-name');?&gt;
&lt;input type=text" class="text" name="coupon_name" value="
&lt;?php if (isset($form_values-&gt;coupon_name) && set_value('coupon_name') == ''){ echo $form_values->coupon_name; }else{ set_value('coupon_name')} ?&gt; />

Maybe there is some benefit of form helpers that I'm missing?