Setting value of a HTML form textarea?

Question

I'm using the following to set the value of a text area..

<?php
$message = $_REQUEST['message'];
?>
<br/><b>Description</b><br/>
<TEXTAREA NAME="message" COLS=40 ROWS=6 value="<?=$message;?>"></TEXTAREA><br/><br/>
<input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="1000000" />

but it doesn’t appear to be working. The value of message is not null. Does anyone have any idea why it's not filling the value?

Answer 1

Textarea has no value. You need to insert your message between the opening and closing tags.

<textarea><?php echo htmlspecialchars($message); ?></textarea>

Answer 2

<textarea name="message" cols="40" rows="6"><?=$message?></textarea>

Note: Make sure $message is properly sanitized and that short_open_tag is enabled. Otherwise, @fabric's accepted answer is a better answer.