Vim highlight a word with * without moving cursor

Question

I would like to be able to highlight the word under cursor without going to the next result.

The solution I found uses a marker:

noremap * mP*N`P

Is there any better solution ?

I noticed vim is not really good to keep the position of its cursor after the execution of commands. For instance, when I switch buffer, the cursor go back to the begining of the line.

I might be interesting to have a global setting for this.

This wiki page has a section on this: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_all_search_pattern_matches — Randy Morris, May 16 '14 at 13:21

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered May 16 '14 at 13:22

There's unfortunately no global setting for that.

One common solution to the "highlight without moving" problem is:

nnoremap * *``

One solution to the "keep the cursor position when switching buffers" problem is:

augroup CursorPosition
  autocmd!
  autocmd BufLeave * let b:winview = winsaveview()
  autocmd BufEnter * if(exists('b:winview')) | call winrestview(b:winview) | endif
augroup END

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered May 16 '14 at 15:10

8

As detailed here, you can define a map as follows:

:nnoremap <F8> :let @/='\<<C-R>=expand("<cword>")<CR>\>'<CR>:set hls<CR>

answered May 16 '14 at 15:10

François

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If you want to use asterisk instead of F8: `nnoremap * :let @/ = '\<'.expand('').'\>'\|set hlsearch` – Llopeth Jun 05 '18 at 09:08

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered May 16 '14 at 19:02

3

My SearchHighlighting plugin changes the * command, so that it doesn't jump to the next match; you can still jump by supplying a [count]. It also extends that command to visual mode (another frequently requested feature not in Vim), and some more.

answered May 16 '14 at 19:02

Ingo Karkat

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No bundle/vundle github repository for your plugin ? – nowox May 18 '14 at 17:21

Vim highlight a word with * without moving cursor

3 Answers3