Normally when we use:
<textarea><?php echo 'ok'; ?></textarea>
We get <?php echo 'ok'; ?> displayed inside the textarea. But on my website I get the ok inside the textarea. So the php code gets executed instead the php code is being showed.
Anybody knows how this can happen? To be clear, I don't want it. I want the code to be displayed.
If you're running a .php file on a PHP-enabled web server... Use the HTML entities for the text you want (specifically the < and >, though potentially more):
<textarea><?php echo 'ok'; ?></textarea>Or you can treat it as a string server-side and HTML-encode it with PHP:
<textarea><?php echo htmlentities("<?php echo 'ok'; ?>"); ?></textarea>
Alternatively, if you don't want to use PHP at all, then simply don't use it. Serve an .html file and/or disable PHP on the server:
<textarea><?php echo 'ok'; ?></textarea>
<textarea> to treat the < and the > as HTML entities, but that seems to work too. I've updated the answer. I would still highly recommend HTML-encoding any output. Especially if that output is in any way user-editable. Otherwise you could expose users to security risks.