Highlight unwanted spaces

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• VimTip721
• VimTip811
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created January 9, 2003 · complexity basic · author Dubhead · version 6.0

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Whitespace characters (tabs, spaces, etc) at end of line are rarely meant to be there; they are usually there by accident. If you don't want them, maybe it pays to highlight them with an alarming color.

Put the following code in your vimrc file.

" Highlight redundant whitespaces
" This will highlight the whitespace characters at end of line
highlight WhitespaceEOL ctermbg=red guibg=red
match WhitespaceEOL /\s\+$/
" This will highlight spaces before a tab:
highlight RedundantSpaces ctermbg=red guibg=red
match RedundantSpaces /\s\+$\| \+\ze\t/

Comments

To see trailing spaces and tabs, you can use:

:set list
:set nolist

To get rid of them:

:%s/\s*$//g

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You can also add this line to .vimrc:

let c_space_errors=1

This wil enable trailing whitespace errors in C/C++ files only.

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I prefer

 set list listchars=tab:>-,trail:.,extends:>

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You can also use the Cream-based showinvisibles script, which puts bullets for every whitespace at the end of a line

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I run into the problem where some of the files I use have spaces instead of tabs at the front of the line. I have this in my .vimrc now:

" Check for extra whitespace
highlight WhitespaceEOL ctermbg=red guibg=red
match WhitespaceEOL /\s\+$/
match WhitespaceEOL /^\ \+/

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The Highlight redundant whitespaces didn't work for me.

Following are the things I added to my rc file from this tip:

" Highlighting whitespaces at end of line
highlight WhitespaceEOL ctermbg=red guibg=red
match WhitespaceEOL /\s\+$/

" Check for extra spaces instead of tabs at the front of the line
match WhitespaceEOL /^\ \+/

" Highlight redundant whitespaces.
highlight RedundantSpaces ctermbg=red guibg=red
match RedundantSpaces /\s\+$\| \+\ze\t/

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This sounds the best for me:

set list listchars=tab:\|_,trail:.

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If you are using c_space_errors=1 to show the trailing spaces, be sure to use a color scheme that will display it.

I was using the Koehler color scheme and it couldn't display the trailing spaces.

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To have it only match when the cursor isn't at the end of the line:

:hi WhiteSpaceEOL ctermbg=red
:match WhiteSpaceEOL /\s\+\%#\@!$/

Then you don't get red appearing all the time as you type, only when your cursor moves from the line any trailing whitespaces are exposed.

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To have vim match only when the cursor isn't at the end of the line, I settled on:

match WhitespaceEOL /\s\+\%#\@<!$/

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