Show whitespace characters in gvim

Is there an easy way to display whitespace characters such as space and tab in gvim? Something like what is implemented in Ge开发者_Python百科dit, Geany, Komodo, and other GUI editors where (when the option is turned on) spaces show as a muted or greyed-out '.' and tabs as '-->'.

Check out listchars and list options in Vim. An example use of this feature:

" part of ~/.vimrc
" highlight tabs and trailing spaces
set listchars=tab:>-,trail:-
set list

You can use any characters you wish if you enable Unicode first

set encoding=utf-8

One line I use (put in ~/.vimrc):

set list listchars=tab:→\ ,trail:·

Learn more about this setting at http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_unwanted_spaces

The color of these characters is controlled by your color scheme.

Here are some of my settings pertaining whitespace.

Use F11 to toggle between displaying whitespace characters or not:

noremap <F11> :set list!<CR>

How to show whitespace characters when list is set:

set listchars=eol:$,tab:>-,trail:.,extends:>,precedes:<,nbsp:_

Highlight special characters in yellow:

highlight SpecialKey term=standout ctermbg=yellow guibg=yellow

Highlight redundant spaces (spaces at the end of the line, spaces before or after tabs):

highlight RedundantSpaces term=standout ctermbg=Grey guibg=#ffddcc    
call matchadd('RedundantSpaces', '\(\s\+$\| \+\ze\t\|\t\zs \+\)\(\%#\)\@!')

Hope these help!

This works well for me:

"trailing white space detection
highlight WhitespaceEOL ctermbg=yellow guibg=yellow
match WhitespaceEOL /\s\+$/