Vim Error: E474: Invalid argument: listchars=tab:»·,trail:·
VimVim Problem Overview
Summary:
I am receiving the following error for having the below line in my .vimrc file
Error:
E474: Invalid argument: listchars=tab:»·,trail:·
.vimrc:
set list listchars=tab:»·,trail:·
I have researched this and it appears to have something to do with UTF-8 encoding being properly set.
System Setup:
lsb_release:
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Release: 12.04
Codename: precise
Locale:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US"
LC_TIME="en_US"
LC_COLLATE="en_US"
LC_MONETARY="en_US"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US"
LC_PAPER="en_US"
LC_NAME="en_US"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US"
LC_ALL=en_US
Vim Solutions
Solution 1 - Vim
Solution:
Place the following lines at the top of the .vimrc the error mentions:
.vimrc:
scriptencoding utf-8
set encoding=utf-8
Solution 2 - Vim
None of the other solutions worked for me.
My listchars looks like this:
listchars=eol:~,tab:>.,trail:~,extends:>,precedes:<,space:_
The problem was that my Vim is too old for the space: parameter in listchars. As we can read in this post (I modified the quote to make it more readable):
> space: was added to listchars in v7.4.710 on 2015-04-21 by Bram.
> The stock Debian install of Vim doesn't offer space:.
The removal of the trailing ,space:_ solves the problem.
But wait! I want my vimrc to be portable
Well, as 816-8055 suggests you might use if has() in your vimrc:
if has("patch-7.4.710")
listchars=eol:~,tab:>.,trail:~,extends:>,precedes:<,space:_
else
listchars=eol:~,tab:>.,trail:~,extends:>,precedes:<
endif
Solution 3 - Vim
Just placing set encoding=utf8 anywhere in my _vimrc, but before set lcs=tab:>-,trail:·,nbsp:·,extends:>,precedes:< solved it
Solution 4 - Vim
Not a real solution to your specific problem, but another (non-utf8-safe) way might be just to use ASCII chars, like this:
set listchars=tab:>-,trail:.,precedes:<,extends:>
If you have UTF-8 available, Justins solution is the better one of course.
Solution 5 - Vim
The tab character should be of the form XY i.e. two characters. Answered here.
Solution 6 - Vim
This isn't the problem here, but may help others with the same error: if your values include a space, you must escape it so vim doesn't parse the list as separate arguments.
:set listchars=tab:>\ ,trail:~,...