In Vim can you stop the color change of white space characters with 'set cursorline' on?

Question

In this Vim screenshot you can see that when moving the cursor over a line it changes the normal color of the whitespace characters (shown on the left) from grey to black. Can I stop this and leave them showing grey always, regardless of cursor position?

enter image description here

I've tried setting these in the colour scheme but no luck:

hi SpecialKey  guibg=bg  guifg=#CCCCCC gui=none
hi NonText     guibg=bg  guifg=#CCCCCC gui=none

:set list / :set listchars=eol:$,tab:>-,trail:~,extends:>,precedes: — Gary Willoughby, Nov 23 '11 at 20:58
@regality If tabs are expanded into spaces, this won’t work. — ZyX, Nov 24 '11 at 17:11
A patch that implements the change has been proposed on the [vim_dev mailing list](http://www.vim.org/community.php): [display of listchars characters on the cursorline & visual-mode](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/oYeTcHINrrg/u4NmKV8pmGcJ) — Ingo Karkat, May 02 '13 at 13:49

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 15 '13 at 15:11

3

You can use :match to highlight the tabs.

:match NonText '^\s\+'

That seems to override the cursor line. It would be better of course to use matchadd() but it seems to be overriden by the cursor line. There might be a way to make it work

answered Apr 15 '13 at 15:11

mb14

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You can use matchadd() if you put it in ~/.vim/after/ – John Eikenberry Dec 28 '14 at 20:47
@JohnEikenberry can you elaborate on how to do that? – tam5 Nov 20 '17 at 18:44
@tam5 By putting it in ~/.vim/after/ it will run after everything else is set up so it can't be overridden. – John Eikenberry Dec 04 '17 at 03:06

Igor Mikushkin · Answer 2 · 2017-08-15T15:51:51.100

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Following lines in .vimrc fixed the problem for me.

au VimEnter * call matchadd('SpecialKey', '^\s\+', -1)
au VimEnter * call matchadd('SpecialKey', '\s\+$', -1)

It overrides other styles application for tabs and trailing spaces inside a cursor line.

edited Aug 15 '17 at 15:51

answered Aug 10 '17 at 00:02

Igor Mikushkin

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 23 '11 at 21:36

0

Yes you can. From :help listchars (at the end):

The "NonText" highlighting will be used for "eol", "extends" and "precedes". "SpecialKey" for "nbsp", "tab" and "trail".

With this knowledge you can modify your color scheme accordingly or add a call to highlight in your vimrc.

answered Nov 23 '11 at 21:36

david

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I've already set these: hi SpecialKey guibg=bg guifg=#CCCCCC gui=none hi NonText guibg=bg guifg=#CCCCCC gui=none – Gary Willoughby Nov 23 '11 at 21:57
Perhaps you have `cursorline` turned on? Try `set nocursorline` to turn it off. – david Nov 23 '11 at 22:27
I'm sorry, ignore that, I can't believe it's in your question title and I didn't read it. – david Nov 23 '11 at 22:37

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 01 '14 at 11:22

-1

I believe you have 'cursorline' set. The CursorLine highlight group defines the highlights for the same. Either you set nocursorline, (which can speed line movements) or change the CursorLine highlight groups fg colors.

answered Apr 01 '14 at 11:22

Dhruva Sagar

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The `CursorLine` highlight group overrides whitespace characters regardless of its fg colours. I believe this is precisely the problem the OP is facing – Zoey Hewll May 26 '18 at 05:03

In Vim can you stop the color change of white space characters with 'set cursorline' on?

4 Answers4

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