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Question

I'm using VIM 8.1.2234 with +multi_byte and +multi_lang

In my vimrc file, I have set listchars=tab:?\ ,trail:· (Notice the "?" and the "·")

When I cat or less my vimrc, the text displays as [intuitively] expected. When I use vim, the options behave as [intuitively] expected. However, when I edit my vimrc, I see set listchars=tab:a<96>?\ ,trail:?·

This has not always been the case. I have not changed my VIM version but I have tweaked my vimrc a bit. I'm convinced it is a setting I tweaked but for the life of me, I cannot figure out which. I tried backing out changes, but no luck.

FWIW, I got both the "?" and the "·" characters into my vimrc via direct keyboard entry.

I don't know if it matters, but now when I open my vimrc file, I get a [converted] flag on the status line. (My encoding is and has always been set encoding=utf-8)

Update

I ran :verbose set fileencoding? and got fileencoding=latin1 (despite my setting it to UTF-8) When I ran :verbose set fileencodings?, VIM reports fileencodings=ucs-bom,utf-8,default,latin1 I tried :e ++enc=utf8 ~/.vimrc and got [ILLEGAL BYTE in line 213] on the status line. Line 213 is defines a macro I use for massaging specific PHP arrays into a Lua tables. Once I removed this macro line -- commenting out was not enough -- my listchars definitions appeared correctly [while editing] and the [converted] status tag went away.

I examined the macro definition closely (with a hex editor, as suggested) and it confirmed that all whitespace was actually whitepsace and all "normal characters" where just that, normal. I suspect that the format of the macro is confusing VIM's parser.

It was VIM's automatic encoding change from UTF-8 to Latin1 that broke listchars. VIM, for whatever reason, gets confused by my macro definition; this is what forces VIM to change the encoding. There is no deep understanding or solution here; the issue has been cleared but the problem remains unsolved.

FWIW, here's the macro definition that [now, but didn't always] breaks VIM's parsing:

let @z = "^M^MV-%->O $data = [^[-%O? ];^M $persist( $data, \"\" );^[^M%-$F/ v$kby^M%-f\"p^M%^M^Mma-$%-mb'aV'b:s/{/[/g^M'aV'b:s/}/]/g^M'aV'b:s/: / => /g^M"