Show whitespace characters in gvim

Question

Is there an easy way to display whitespace characters such as space and tab in gvim? Something like what is implemented in Gedit, Geany, Komodo, and other GUI editors where

Answer 1

Here are some of my settings pertaining whitespace.

Use F11 to toggle between displaying whitespace characters or not:

noremap  :set list!

How to show whitespace characters when list is set:

set listchars=eol:$,tab:>-,trail:.,extends:>,precedes:<,nbsp:_

Highlight special characters in yellow:

highlight SpecialKey term=standout ctermbg=yellow guibg=yellow

Highlight redundant spaces (spaces at the end of the line, spaces before or after tabs):

highlight RedundantSpaces term=standout ctermbg=Grey guibg=#ffddcc    
call matchadd('RedundantSpaces', '\(\s\+$\| \+\ze\t\|\t\zs \+\)\(\%#\)\@!')

Hope these help!