Don't show tab characters as ^I or <09> in the output of :registers

Question

If I type :registers, I see a lot of <09>:

"1   <09><09><09>d = self / i.to_f^J<09><09><09>r = d.to_s^J<09><09><09>p r =~ /0$/^J
"2   <09><09><09>puts ''^J
"3   <09><09><09>p "#{self}, #{i}"^J<09><09><09>p d^J

The <09> represents a Tab character; they're displayed in blue.

If I use :set display&vim, I get something marginally better:

"1   ^I^I^Id = self / i.to_f^J^I^I^Ir = d.to_s^J^I^I^Ip r =~ /0$/^J
"2   ^I^I^Iputs ''^J
"3   ^I^I^Ip "#{self}, #{i}"^J^I^I^Ip d^J

But it's still not useful enough to easily scan the output for the line I want..

I know this is a feature, and I understand why it's there, but I find this extremely unhelpful when looking for the register I want.

Is there any way to either not show it at all or show them as spaces?

Answer 1

You chose to have them displayed that way by adding the uhex setting to the 'display' option. You can :set display-=uhex to restore the default behavior of displaying them as ^I.

Getting :reg to display them differently would require a Vim patch, but some plugins provide displays of the registers in a scratch buffer, which may help.

• Lord of the Regs provides a sidebar to display all the registers.
• vimple is a general Vim library, but it has a handy concept called an overlay (example). You could use that to build a scratch buffer of the registers. It's also easy to setup actions in that buffer.