Why is textarea filled with mysterious white spaces

Question

I have a simple text area in a form like this    lt textarea style  width 350px  height 80px   cols  42  rows  5  name  sitelink  gt       lt  php if  siteLink val  echo  siteLink val    gt    lt  textarea gt    I keep getting extra white space in this textarea  When I tab into it my cursor is like in the middle of the textarea and not in the beginning  What is the explanation

User · Answer

One solution that has worked for me is adding the style white-space: normal; to the textarea because at times it is not feasible to eliminate all the whitespace (for example when you want your code to abide to your coding guidelines which requires adding tabs, whitespaces and line breaks)

Please note that the default for textarea, at least in chrome is: white-space: pre-wrap;

User · Answer

Basically it should be   lt textarea gt something here with no spaces in the begining lt  textarea gt    If there are some predefined spaces lets say due to code formatting like below   lt textarea gt             some variable  lt  textarea gt    The spaces shown by dots keeps on adding on each submit

User · Answer

I got the same problem  and the solution is very simple  don t start a new line  Although some of the previous answers can solve the problem  the idea is not stated clearly   The important understanding is  to get rid of the unintended spaces  never start a new line just after your start tag    The following way is WRONG and will leave a lot of unwanted spaces before your text content     lt textarea gt      text content    start with a new line will leave a lot of unwanted spaces   lt  textarea gt    The RIGHT WAY to do it is     lt textarea gt text content   put text content right after your start tag  no new line   lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

lt textarea style  width 350px    height 80px   cols  42  rows  5  name  sitelink    gt  lt  php if  siteLink val  echo  siteLink val    gt  lt  textarea gt     Moving      down works for me

User · Answer

I m against HTML code mixed with PHP code   However try this    lt textarea style  width 350px  height 80px   cols  42  rows  5  name  sitelink  gt   lt  php      if  siteLink val           echo trim  siteLink val     gt    lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

To make it look a bit cleaner  consider using the ternary operator    lt textarea gt  lt      siteLink val    siteLink val          gt  lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

Another work around would be to use javascript     jquery    textarea someid   html    textarea someid   html   trim        without jquery document getElementById  someid   innerHTML   document getElementById  someid   innerHTML trim      This is what I did  Removing white-spaces and line-breaks in the code makes the line too long

User · Answer

Make sure first that your  siteLink val isn t returning white space as a value  The  lt textarea gt  element by default has an empty value so if the variable you re echo ing for some reason has spaces  there s your problem right off the bat    To make the code the absolute cleanest  I would suggest you could do something like this  allowing for some more flexibility later  I ve made a function that returns either a NULL if the variable isn t present  what you seem to be aiming for in the original post  and the absolute value otherwise  Once you ve made sure of your variable s contents  try this   function build siteLink val          if    siteLink val               return  siteLink val               else             return                output siteLink val   build siteLink val      And the following code in your textarea would now read    lt textarea style  width 350px  height 80px   cols  42  rows  5  name  sitelink  gt  lt    output siteLink val  gt  lt  textarea gt    This is assuming your PHP install is configured for short-hand variable calls  as seen in the shortened   lt     gt   tags  If you cannot output this way  remember to preface your PHP code with   lt  php  and close with    gt      Avoid line breaks between  lt textarea gt  s because it can create the potential of erroneous characters    Also  check your CSS to make sure there isn t a padding rule pushing text inward   Also  you specify a cols and rows value on the textarea  and then style a width and height  These rules are counter-productive  and will result in inconsistent visuals  Stick with either defining the size through style  I recommend giving the element a class  or the rows cols

User · Answer

In short    lt textarea gt  should be closed immediately on the same line where it started     General Practice  this will add-up line-breaks and spaces used for indentation in the code    lt textarea id  sitelink  name  sitelink  gt   lt  textarea gt    Correct Practice   lt textarea id  sitelink  name  sitelink  gt  lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

Also  when you say that the cursor is in the  middle  of the textarea  it makes me think you could also either have extra padding or text-align  center defined somewhere in your CSS

User · Answer

I know its late but may help others   use this in when document indentation is required      document   ready function            textarea   each function                  this  val   this  val   trim                            same question

User · Answer

Any space in between textarea openning and closing tags will be consider as whitespace  So for your above code  the correct way will be     lt textarea style  width 350px  height 80px   cols  42  rows  5  name  sitelink  gt  lt  php if  siteLink val  echo  siteLink val    gt  lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

Please make sure there is no linebreak or space after   it s to make sure there is no whitespace or tab  just copy and paste this code    I had fix it for you   lt textarea style  width 350px  height 80px   cols  42  rows  5  name  sitelink  gt  lt  php if  siteLink val  echo trim  siteLink val    gt  lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

Look closely at your code  In it  there are already three line breaks  and a ton of white space before  lt  textarea gt   Remove those first so that there are no line breaks in between the tags any more  It might already do the trick

User · Answer

Just define your  and your close tag  in same line    lt textarea class  form-control            id  newText            rows  6            placeholder  Your placeholder here               required           name  newText  gt  lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

keep textarea code with no additional white spaces inside  moreover if you see extra blank lines there is solution in meta language    lt textarea gt  for line in lines  echo line replace   n    r   endfor  lt  textarea gt    it will print lines without additional blank lines of course it depends if your lines ending with   n     r n  or    - please adapt

User · Answer

Furthermore  the textarea tag shows spaces for new lines  tabs  etc  in multiline code

User · Answer

If you still like to use indentation  do it after opening the  lt  php tag  like so    lt textarea style  width 350px  height 80px   cols  42  rows  5  name  sitelink  gt  lt  php     lt --- newline     if  siteLink val  echo  siteLink val      lt --- indented  newline   gt  lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

Open  and close   your PHP tags right after  and before  your textarea tags    lt textarea style  width 350px  height 80px   cols  42  rows  5  name  sitelink  gt  lt  php   if  siteLink val  echo  siteLink val    gt  lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

The text area shows mysterious spaces because there is a real space exists in the tags   lt textarea gt                      lt php  echo  var    gt                            lt  textarea gt  after removing these extra spaces between the tags  will solve the issue    as following        lt textarea gt  lt php  echo  var    gt  lt  textarea gt

User · Answer

Well  everything between   lt textarea gt  and  lt  textarea gt  is used as the default value for your textarea box  There is some whitespace in your example there  Try to eliminate all of that

[php] Why is textarea filled with mysterious white spaces?

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