Why is textarea filled with mysterious white spaces?

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

Well, everything between <textarea> and </textarea> is used as the default value for your textarea box. There is some whitespace in your example there. Try to eliminate all of that.

Open (and close!) your PHP tags right after, and before, your textarea tags:

<textarea style="width:350px; height:80px;" cols="42" rows="5" name="sitelink"><?php
  if($siteLink_val) echo $siteLink_val;
?></textarea>

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:

 <textarea>
    text content // start with a new line will leave a lot of unwanted spaces
 </textarea>

The RIGHT WAY to do it is:

 <textarea>text content //put text content right after your start tag, no new line
 </textarea>

To make it look a bit cleaner, consider using the ternary operator:

<textarea><?=( $siteLink_val ? $siteLink_val : '' );?></textarea>

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

<textarea style="width:350px; height:80px;" cols="42" rows="5" name="sitelink"><?php if($siteLink_val) echo trim($siteLink_val);?></textarea>

Just define your and your close tag in same line.

<textarea class="form-control"
          id="newText"
          rows="6"
          placeholder="Your placeholder here..."
          required
          name="newText"></textarea>

simply put all that on one-line

<textarea style="width:350px; height:80px;" cols="42" rows="5" name="sitelink"><?php if($siteLink_val) echo $siteLink_val; ?></textarea>

I'm against HTML code mixed with PHP code.

However try this:

<textarea style="width:350px; height:80px;" cols="42" rows="5" name="sitelink">
<?php 
    if($siteLink_val) 
        echo trim($siteLink_val);
?> 
</textarea>

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.

Make sure first that your $siteLink_val isn't returning white space as a value. The <textarea> 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:

<textarea style="width:350px; height:80px;" cols="42" rows="5" name="sitelink"><?=$output_siteLink_val?></textarea>

This is assuming your PHP install is configured for short-hand variable calls, as seen in the shortened "<?=?>" tags. If you cannot output this way, remember to preface your PHP code with "<?php" and close with "?>".

Avoid line breaks between <textarea>'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.

In addition to doing this:

Before:

<textarea style="width:350px; height:80px;" cols="42" rows="5" name="sitelink">
    <?php if($siteLink_val) echo $siteLink_val; ?> 
</textarea>

after:

<textarea style="width:350px; height:80px;" cols="42" rows="5" name="sitelink"><?php if($siteLink_val) echo $siteLink_val; ?></textarea>

I too added the method trim() of PHP:

<textarea style="width:350px; height:80px;" cols="42" rows="5" name="sitelink"><?php if($siteLink_val) echo trim($siteLink_val); ?></textarea>