does <textarea> auto-encode inner html?

Question

I was trying to print some text between <textarea> and </textarea> tags, but I've noticed that if I input some characters like < and >, textarea automatically converts them to < and >.

Example:

<textarea><script></textarea>

will produce this HTML

<textarea>&lt;script&gt;</textarea>

Can you explain me why this happens?

Thanks in advance, any help is appreciated, best regards.

Answer 1

It doesn't escape the contents. The HTML source remains exactly the same. It just has the capability to display the contents as is which I guess is a requirement of the <textarea> tag.