Vim, being one of the most powerful and customizable text editors available, offers numerous options for visualizing invisible characters such as white spaces. Displaying these characters can be particularly useful during coding or editing sessions when distinguishing between tabs and spaces becomes crucial.
To display all white spaces as characters in Vim, you will primarily use two commands: :set list and :set listchars. The first command enables the listing of invisible characters, while the second allows you to specify which characters should be displayed for various types of invisible characters, including tabs, trailing spaces, and more.
Enabling List Mode
To start displaying invisible characters, you need to enable Vim’s list mode. This is done by executing the following command:
:set list
This will make Vim display most invisible characters in a visible form, but it does not directly affect how white spaces are displayed unless you also configure listchars.
Configuring List Characters
The :set listchars command allows you to specify which characters should be used to represent different types of invisible characters. For example, to display tabs and trailing spaces with specific characters, you could use:
:set listchars=eol:$,tab:>-,trail:~,extends:>,precedes:<
However, this does not directly address displaying all white spaces as a character.
Displaying White Spaces
As of Vim version 7.4.710 and later, you can explicitly set a character to represent spaces using the space option within listchars. For instance:
:set listchars+=space:␣
This command sets the ␣ symbol (a visible space character) to represent all spaces.
To display all types of white spaces, including tabs and trailing spaces with their respective representations, and also show regular spaces as a visible character, you can combine these settings:
:set listchars=eol:¬,tab:>·,trail:~,extends:>,precedes:<,space:␣
Then, enable the list mode to see these characters in action:
:set list
Toggling List Mode
It can be convenient to have a shortcut for toggling list mode on and off. This allows you to quickly switch between displaying invisible characters and a standard view. You can achieve this by adding mappings to your .vimrc file, such as:
noremap <F5> :set list!<CR>
inoremap <F5> <C-o>:set list!<CR>
cnoremap <F5> <C-c>:set list!<CR>
These mappings will toggle list mode when you press F5 in normal, insert, and command-line modes.
Disabling List Mode
When you no longer wish to see invisible characters represented as visible characters, you can disable list mode with the following command:
:set nolist
In conclusion, displaying all white spaces as characters in Vim is a straightforward process once you understand how to use :set list and :set listchars. By leveraging these commands and configuring your .vimrc for convenience, you can easily visualize invisible characters during your editing sessions.