Prevent jumping when pattern matching

Question

Is there a way to prevent cursor to search forward when using the * or /?

I just want to highlight the word I am on & others, but not move to forward nor backward.

Answer 1

This will do for the * search, I'm not sure how to do that for /.

nnoremap <silent> * :let @/= '\<' . expand('<cword>') . '\>' <bar> set hls <cr>

@/ is the search register, which we set to <cword>, the word under the cursor, surrounded by words boundaries \< \> to match actual words rather than parts of words.

g* matches even "non words". We can adapt it as well :

nnoremap <silent> g* :let @/=expand('<cword>') <bar> set hls <cr>

For visual mode:

vnoremap * y/\V<C-R>=escape(@",'/\')<CR><CR>

This copies the selection into the unnamed register @" (:h registers), starts a search with its content, backslashes escaped, via the :h expression register (inserted with <C-R>=).