Viewing tab, white space and other special character in vi editor

[Shivkumar]

Hi All,

I use "set list" command to view extra space at the end of line in vi editor.

How do i view tab, white space, and other special characters in vi editor ?

Thanks,
Shiv

[Michael Steele_2]

Hi

How's about

nroff -ms file1
nroff -ms file1 | ssp
col -b M < file1
rmnl
cat file1 | col -b

[Raj D. · Accepted solution]

Shiv,

vi do not show all the special or non-printing characters most of times, and depends on version of vi.

Many versions of vi, ':set list' causes -
to show up as ^I
and to be designated by $ .



You can use 'od -cx' to get specil characters details with hex output (#cat filename | od -cx " , or cat -v to see the special characters.

And also you can try using vim or emcs ,


Hth,
Raj.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Shiv:

In lieu of 'vi' it is very convenient to use:

# cat -etv file

Which will list tab characters as '^I'; formfeed characters as '^L'; newline characters as '$'. Other non-printing characters are displayed as defined in the 'ascii(5)' manpages:

 http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60130/ascii.5 

Admin [above link is no longer valid, please visit https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/ ]

You can also use 'vis' to see otherwise non-printing characters:

 http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60130/vis.1 

Admin [above link is no longer valid, please visit https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/ ]

The 'od' or ('xd') utility is also useful. For example using 'xd -ta file' works nicely with text data.

http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60130/od.1.html 

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Regards!

...JRF...

[Suraj K Sankari]

HI,.
I used to do :se list in vi command prompt after you can see lots of special characters

Tab characters as '^I';
Newline characters as '$'.

to come out from this use se nolist
Suraj

[Viveki]

Hi Shiv,

The only command in vi to list characters like tab, carriage return etc is "set list"

See full options at :
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialAdvanced_vi.html

[Dennis Handly]

>How do I view tab, white space, and other special characters in vi editor?

The same way, :set list

vis(1) also has several options for special chars.

>Raj: You can use 'od -cx' to get special characters details with hex output

If you really want hex, you should use xd(1).