Vim Highlighting

I highlight my searches in VIM using the following in my .vimrc:

" Highlight search terms...
set hlsearch
set incsearch " ...dynamically as they are typed.
nmap  n :silent :nohlsearch
" stop highlighting with n

While demoing or in a code review it is nice to highlight more than one item. You can use searching to match multiple words:

/term1\|term2

Note: You can also us CTRL+R followed by a ‘/’ to paste the exact last search term

However, it is also nice to do highlights in different colors – or to keep a highlight persistent while you search for other terms. To do this I use:

:match Search /pattern/

Now this will use the same highlight color as normal search. You can replace Search, the name of the highlight group, with another group to highlight with a different color (tab completion works here).

To disable the highlighting from match use:

:match none

Enjoy highlighting!