More nice characters in vim

Question

I am trying to make vim more like what I used in Coda 2.

In my .vimrc , I have this line:

 set listchars=tab:➝.,extends:#,nbsp:. 

This makes my spaces look like this:

However, Id, not the points that were visible, so itd looks more like this:

I tried using the space character, but in the end I got the following warning:

 E474: Invalid argument: listchars=tab:➝ 

What symbol can I use that will not be visible on the screen and also will not throw a warning?

Answer 1

You can escape the space character as follows:

 set listchars=tab:➝\ ,extends:#,nbsp:. 

Answer 2

In listchars tab: accepts characters. Directly from the help file:

  tab:xy Two characters to be used to show a tab. The first char is used once. The second char is repeated to fill the space that the tab normally occupies. "tab:>-" will show a tab that takes four spaces as ">---". When omitted, a tab is show as ^I. 

So you can just use the space instead of the dot that you use for the second character, however you need to avoid it: set listchars=tab:➝\ ,extends:#,nbsp:. to get the desired result.