Chrispian.com » unix/linux http://www.chrispian.com Nothing to Say Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:37:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Quick vi tip: Show Hidden Characters http://www.chrispian.com/65/quick-vi-tip-show-hidden-characters http://www.chrispian.com/65/quick-vi-tip-show-hidden-characters#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:05:12 +0000 Chrispian http://www.chrispian.com/65/quick-vi-tip-show-hidden-characters I do a lot of development in linux/unix. In fact, that’s where all my development is, but I spend a fair amount of time in the “CLI” or command line interface. I use putty and ssh in to edit files and look at logs and just generally do what I do.

Today I ran into a problem with a file and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I kept getting an error and the spacing was off so I started suspecting a hidden character. vi, the command line editor I use in linux can show you hidden characters. Just type:

:set list

And bingo, hidden characters are revealed.

Turning them back off is just as easy:

:set nolist

Write that down, it comes in handy.

Updated 2/25/10: Thanks to Stephen in the comments, I’ve updated the above commands. I had the : in the wrong place!

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