Show SOME invisible/whitespace characters in Eclipse

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A long while back I transitioned to doing all my web application development in Eclipse from BBEdit. But I miss one little feature from BBEdit. I used to be able to show invisible characters like tabs but not show other invisibles like spaces. I know that I can bulk turn all of these on in Eclipse, but I wonder if there is a way to show only some invisibles in Eclipse.

Excurvature answered 12/12, 2008 at 21:16 Comment(2)

Incase anyone in the future lands on this page like I did looking for how to show white space in eclipse it is: Window>Preferences>General>Editors>Text Editors – Commandeer 15/1, 2010 at 21:58

Update: Eclipse has this ability from 3.7M3 version. You can adjust the visibility of space, tab, cr and lf individually. – Narial 2/11, 2010 at 8:42

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~~Unfortunately, you can only turn on all invisible (whitespace) characters at the same time. I suggest you file an enhancement request but I doubt they will pick it up.~~

The text component in Eclipse is very complicated as it is and they are not keen on making them even worse.

[UPDATE] This has been fixed in Eclipse 3.7: Go to Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors

Click on the link at ☑ Show whitespace characters (configure visibility) to fine tune what should be shown.

Kudos go to John Isaacks

Callaghan answered 12/12, 2008 at 21:27 Comment(2)

Thanks for the tip. It's nice to know that this is probably a fixed issue. I will go ahead and search out the Eclipse issue system and file a request. – Excurvature 12/12, 2008 at 23:5

Now that Eclipse Indigo is out, this answer is no longer accurate. See John's comment on the original question. – Shechem 24/6, 2011 at 0:30

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Navigate to Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors

Click on the CheckBox "Show whitespace characters".

enter image description here

Thats all.!!!

Modular answered 7/1, 2015 at 20:54 Comment(0)

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I would prefer to keep the "Show Whitespace" button on the toolbar, so that in one click you can toggle it.

Go to Window -> Perspective -> Customize Perspective and enable to show the button on toolbar.

Sowers answered 10/6, 2015 at 10:6 Comment(2)

Exactly what I wanted. I even tried to search for 'word wrap' in context menu but couldn't find it in Neon. This helped a lot. Thanks. – Roping 18/4, 2017 at 13:13

This is great. But I've got a problem: those symbols are grayed out when in the toolbar. Any idea why? It works in Java files but is not enabled in build.gradle files. – Faraway 30/4 at 5:41

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I use Checkstlye plugin for such a purpose. In Checkstyle configuration, I add special regexp rules to detect lines with TABs and then mark such lines as checkstyle ERROR, which is clearly visible in Eclipse editor. Works fine.

Drapery answered 5/4, 2010 at 18:58 Comment(0)

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AnyEdit Scroll all the way down: http://andrei.gmxhome.de/anyedit/examples.html

Ingrate answered 15/11, 2011 at 2:55 Comment(1)

GitX (mac) can also highlight whitespace error in commit screen. – Kohl 15/11, 2011 at 3:52

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