Factoring out commands in vimrc?

Question

I've got highlighting of searches on and have the following set up to clear it in my vimrc

nnoremap <silent> <Space> :nohlsearch<Bar>:echo<CR> 

I've also got the haskell plugin type information plugin hdevtools installed. This keeps a highlight/selection up once you've asked for the type of an expression in case you want to expand that expression using the type info command again.

I'd like to be able to clear both lots of highlighting with the same key press, previously I'd had it set up to have a different shortcut but it's fiddly.

However my plugin shortcuts are set up with autocmds like this:

autocmd FileType haskell nnoremap <buffer> <silent> <space> :HdevtoolsClear<CR>

I know I could just do copy and paste and a in between but that means if I change this stuff I have to change it in two places.

I'd like some way to do something like this:

clearSearchHighlight = :nohlsearch<Bar>:echo<CR>
nnoremap <silent> <Space> clearSearchHighlight
autocmd FileType haskell nnoremap <buffer> <silent> <space> :HdevtoolsClear<CR> <bar> clearSearchHighlight

Answer 1

You could do this by setting up your actions as a user command.

You could also use a normal-mode map (which you'd then invoke with :normal), but in this instance you can't use a function because you can't clear highlighting from a function! (See :help :nohlsearch.)

command! ClearSearchHighlight nohlsearch | echo

nnoremap <space> :ClearSearchHighlight<CR>
autocmd FileType haskell nnoremap <buffer> <silent> <space> :HdevtoolsClear<CR>:ClearSearchHighlight<CR>

Answer 2

You can bind those commands to Ctrl+L:

nmap <C-l> :nohls<CR>:HdevtoolsClear<CR>:redraw!<CR>

Ctrl+L usually just redraws the screen. Now it will, in addition, clear the highlighting.