Make :w automatically run :nohl

Question

I want :nohl to be run automatically whenever I run :w.

How can I set this up?

I tried

autocmd BufWrite * :nohl

in my vimrc but that's not working

---

Apparently (from comments, thanks D. Ben Knoble)

Theres a note in the help somewhere about how you cant use nohl in autocmds

So how can I do it without autocmds?

Answer 1

Indeed there is this note at :h function-search-undo:

The last used search pattern and the redo command "."
will not be changed by the function.  This also
implies that the effect of :nohlsearch is undone
when the function returns.

Which also applies to auto commands, so as you noted, :au BufWritePre * :nohls won't work.

However, you can trick Vim with using the feedkeys() function. I think the following should work (and does from my limited testing):

au BufWritePre * :call feedkeys(":nohls\n")

This will inject the command directly into Vims typeahead buffer and won't be marked as coming from a function that needs to be undone once the auto command returns.

Answer 2

For the convenient, I usually save the file whenever I press the ESC so that I mapped ESC like this: map <esc> :w\|:noh<cr> The ESC functionality still working normally.