The sublime text does not show Unicode(nonprintable) characters by default. Sometimes, you have to see a non-printable character such as white spaces and tabs in the editor.

This post talks about how to view whitespace and tab characters.

How to view white and tab space characters in the sublime text editor?

Here are the steps

  • Open Sublime text editor( 2 or 3 versions)

  • Go to the Preferences Menu-> Settings item

  • YOu should see Preferences.sublime-settings opened on the below screen.

Sublime text view white space and tab

  • update the draw_white_space value to all as seen below

    The updated json object contains the following.

  {
    "ignored_packages":
    [
        "Vintage",
    ],
    "font_size": 12,
    "draw_white_space": "all",
    "translate_tabs_to_spaces": true

}

draw_white_space: It shows . the symbol in place of white spaces. translate_tabs_to_spaces: tab is of four spaces, with this, It shows four dots(.) in places tabs.

  • Now open any file, opened HTML file, you should see the . character in place of white spaces

Sublime text view white space and tab

Another way is using packages or plugins.

Unicode Character Highlighter is the package you can install to view Unicode characters.