How can I show tabs as spaces instead of ^I or CTRL-I?

Question

I use list and listchars to show my whitespace, but the code style I adhere to uses tabs. Seeing > or ^I for all of my tabs is nauseating.

How would I keep all of my existing list characters but with a blank tab character?

Note that setting a space as a tab means you won't be able to distinguish between spaces and tabs, or see tabs in other places (like inside a string, end of the line). It sort of defeats the purpose of set list ;-) Some other (smaller) character you may try: · (MIDDLE DOT), ␣ (OPEN BOX) or ₋ (SUBSCRIPT MINUS). (I personally use: set listchars=tab:!·). — Martin Tournoij, Aug 13, 2015 at 8:28
@Carpetsmoker correct. This is why I have a linter. :) Exclamation point might not be so bad, I suppose I could play around with them. — Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED, Aug 13, 2015 at 8:28
As a worthy note, I've actually ended up using a tiny arrow for my tabs. Not as intrusive. › — Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED, Mar 29, 2016 at 23:32

Martin Tournoij · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-24 23:25:59Z

29

'listchars' takes two characters for tab so you can simply use two regular spaces:

set listchars=tab:\ \ ,trail:·,eol:¬,nbsp:_

Martin Tournoij

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answered Aug 13, 2015 at 7:32

romainl

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1

Didn't know you could do \ , though it makes sense since you can search with them (/\ ). I was trying \s, ' ', etc.
– Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED
Aug 13, 2015 at 7:33

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Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:38:59Z

3

Turns out non-breaking spaces work just fine.

As per this answer, the utf-8 sequence is "\xc2\xa0".

Since I'm on a mac, I simply did echo -en "\xc2\xa0" | pbcopy and then added them to my .vimrc:

set listchars=tab:[2p],...

where [2p] pasted the clipboard twice. The result ended up being

set listchars=tab:<nbsp><nbsp>,...

which correctly caused tabs to show up as simple whitespace.

CommunityBot

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answered Aug 13, 2015 at 6:22

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That's a lot of trouble when you could do set listchars=tab:\ \ ,....
– romainl
Aug 13, 2015 at 7:27
1

@romainl then make an answer :)
– Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED
Aug 13, 2015 at 7:27

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2 Answers 2