Unable to make gray eol character by .vimrc

Answer 1

The trail, tab and nbsp listchars use the SpecialKey highlight group, so you can use this:

highlight SpecialKey ctermfg=8

to make the $ symbol grey. If you have 256 colors enabled, you can use a different shade of grey, like 243, etc.

Answer 2

There are two highlighting groups: SpecialKey and NonText. The trailing characters you mention belong to the NonText one.

Try something like this (y/pasted):

set list
set listchars=eol:$,tab:>-,trail:~,extends:>,precedes:<
hi NonText ctermfg=7 guifg=gray

Does that work for you, or did I understand the question wrong (quite possible).

Answer 3

If you want the eol to be gray, specify the eol suboption of listchars instead of trail:

set list listchars=tab:>>,eol:$

trail shows the unnecessary whitespace characters at the end of the lines, not the end of lines themselves.

If you want to set the color of eol, you have to set the highlighting of the NonText group:

highlight NonText ctermfg=8 guifg=gray

If you specify both ctermfg and guifg, the highlighting will work both in the GUI and in a terminal.

I have to point out though some shortcomings:

• The highlighting of the tilde characters after the end of the buffer are the same as the highlighting of the eol-signs. I think it is not possible to separate those; their highlightings are both determined by the highlighting of NonText. So if you set gray eols, you will be gray tildes.
• On my terminal, ctermfg=8 makes red and not gray text.