CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlcharacterphpstormspecial-characters
Ruwen Gastrock
Ruwen Gastrock

Reputation: 103

How to display hidden characters in PhpStorm, especially line seperators

I got some special characters in my codes, take a look at:


 a


 
 


It's just shown in frontend with normal characters like an "a". Now the same characters without any normal characters:

Characters starts here








Characters ends here

Ok it looks like this Editor will not save empty 
 , try it with snippet. 

<html><p>
    </p></html>

The problem is, in PhpStorm this characters wont be shown, even not with

"settings - Editor - General - Appearance - show whitespaces" or

"settings - Editor - General - Appearance - show method separators"

Only "strg+f, strg+r" will find this characters.

I think this character is an "only-mac-char" :) I'm working with Windows, and I can't test it on mac.

EDIT: Sorry i could identify it as "U+2028 : LINE SEPARATOR" http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html

The big problem is that phpStorm didn't show anything in the code. Like there is no character, but moving with the arrow keys notice 2 steps at this position, between 2 tags looks like "><" but it's "> <".

Upvotes: 9

Views: 11783

Answers (1)

LazyOne
LazyOne

Reputation: 165088

Based on your update it is now clear what character you have in mind:

Sorry I could identify it as "U+2028 : LINE SEPARATOR" http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html

Install and use Zero Width Characters locator 2 plugin: it can detect quite a few invisible characters (e.g. UTF-8 BOOM sequence, non-breakable space, Unicode line separator (your case) etc).

It is implemented as a separate inspection with highest (Error) severity so will be easy to spot or check the whole folder/project just for these issues.

There is a ticket (Feature Request) to have an option to show invisible characters in the editor.

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-115572 -- watch this ticket (star/vote/comment) to get notified on any progress. implemented in 2020.2 version.

Other related tickets:

UPDATE 2021-11-10:
As of 2020.2 version the IDE can show invisible/special symbols right in the editor.

An example:
enter image description here

Upvotes: 10

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