How can the issue of data not being displayed in a <textarea> element be resolved in PHP?

The issue of data not being displayed in a <textarea> element in PHP can be resolved by using the htmlspecialchars() function to encode the data before inserting it into the <textarea> element. This function will convert special characters into HTML entities, ensuring that the data is displayed correctly within the <textarea>.

&lt;?php
// Assuming $data contains the text to be displayed in the &lt;textarea&gt;
$data = &quot;Some text with special characters like &lt; and &gt;&quot;;

// Encode the data using htmlspecialchars() before inserting into &lt;textarea&gt;
echo &#039;&lt;textarea&gt;&#039;.htmlspecialchars($data).&#039;&lt;/textarea&gt;&#039;;
?&gt;