I have the following line of code in a user-profile-form.tpl.php which Drupal uses to render an input field in the user's edit profile page.

```
print render($form['field_machine_name']);
// this field can be found in the database table field_data_field_machine_name

```

The issue is that I want to run the value field\_machine\_name through a function like `$form['field_machine_name'] = make_seo_url($form['field_machine_name'])` before I run the `render()` function. But this totally breaks the form because `$form['field_machine_name']` is some very large array and `render()` output html input tag instead of the actual field\_machine\_name itself.

How does one actually go about massaging values in the `$form` variable before outputting it as an html field in `render()`?

Additionally, i want to make sure anytime field\_machine\_name is printed anywhere on the drupal site, i want it to run through the `make_seo_url()` function. Is there a global place i can do this?