Re: about showing all characters including non-printable, control etc

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:

> John A Pershing Jr <pershing@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>
>> Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:
>>
>>> How can I make emacs show all the characters in a given line?
>>
>> Ummmm...  By default, Emacs *does* show all the characters in each
>> line.  Can you give us a bit more detail on what sort of characters you
>> are using, and what is (or isn't) getting displayed?
>>
>> Note: 
...  
>
> In the instant case I was looking for tabs in a rc file that requires
> tabs and not spc... here is a sample:
> (Its an rsnapshot.conf file)
>
> There two tabs after each variable name... then the value:
>
>   # All snapshots will be stored under this root directory.
>   snapshot_root       /bk/rsnap/home
>   cmd_cp              /bin/cp
>   # uncomment this to use the rm program instead of the built-in perl routine
>   cmd_rm              /bin/rm
>
> Maybe its just a setting on my end and only tabs are invisible.
>
> Do you see the two tabs by default?

Well, there shouldn't be tabs in text files (but Makefiles, as a
legacy exception).  Use  M-x untabify RET to replace them by spaces.


Now, you can use M-x whitespace-global-mode RET
and toggle on the M-x whitespace-toggle-spacetab-check RET
that will show you when there are spaces before tabs.

You could modify the whitespace-spacetab-regexp to match any sequence
of space and tab containing at least one tab, or just tabs.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__