Unable to make gray eol character by .vimrc

Question

I want to have a gray eol character set by

set list listchars=tab:>>,trail:$

where there are no spaces next to the character ":"

I get no eol character for the above code if I use no spaces next to ":".

I get a green trailing character if I use one space at

- - tab:[space]>> --

although I have not set it up explicitly

such that

How can you make the eol character gray in Vim, and to make it work again?

Answer 1

There are two highlighting groups: SpecialKey and NonText. The trailing characters you mention belong to the NonText one.

Try something like this (y/pasted):

set list
set listchars=eol:$,tab:>-,trail:~,extends:>,precedes:<
hi NonText ctermfg=7 guifg=gray

Does that work for you, or did I understand the question wrong (quite possible).

Answer 2

The trail , tab and nbsp listchars use the SpecialKey highlight group, so you can use this:

highlight SpecialKey ctermfg=8

to make the $ symbol grey. If you have 256 colors enabled, you can use a different shade of grey, like 243, etc.

Answer 3

If you want the eol to be gray, specify the eol suboption of listchars instead of trail :

set list listchars=tab:>>,eol:$

trail shows the unnecessary whitespace characters at the end of the lines, not the end of lines themselves.

If you want to set the color of eol , you have to set the highlighting of the NonText group:

highlight NonText ctermfg=8 guifg=gray

If you specify both ctermfg and guifg , the highlighting will work both in the GUI and in a terminal.

I have to point out though some shortcomings:

The highlighting of the tilde characters after the end of the buffer are the same as the highlighting of the eol-signs. I think it is not possible to separate those; their highlightings are both determined by the highlighting of NonText . So if you set gray eols, you will be gray tildes.
On my terminal, ctermfg=8 makes red and not gray text.