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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-13T13:20:38+00:00

I have a vim highlight to display whitespace errors in code: Highlight redundant whitespaces

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I have a vim highlight to display whitespace errors in code:

" Highlight redundant whitespaces and tabs.
highlight RedundantSpaces ctermbg=red
match RedundantSpaces /\s\+$\| \+\ze\t\|\t/

Which displays trailing whitespace problems like this:
White space errors highlighted in red

However, i’ve recently started using the solarized color scheme and I am not able to get these highlights to display.
solarized with no highlights

I’ve tried changing the color names to no avail. The relevant part of my (simple) .vimrc says:

syntax enable
set background=dark
colorscheme solarized
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Moving the :highlight after the :colorscheme still doesn’t help you when you switch colorschemes in the Vim session.

    For that to work, re-define your highlighting via the ColorScheme event:

    autocmd ColorScheme * highlight RedundantSpaces ctermbg=red

    BTW, your minimalistic solution has other problems:

    1. It does not highlight in split windows.
    2. You lose the ability of quickly highlighting custom stuff via :match.

    There are several plugins that offer this functionality, in a better way. Mine is called ShowTrailingWhitespace; the plugin page contains links to alternatives.

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