Do not show mapped command in command line

Question

I am using

nnoremap <esc> :noh<return><esc>

to remove the highlighting after a search with hlsearch on.

Pressing <esc>, this shows :noh in the command line. I would like to turn this off (preferably without any side effects).

Answer 1

As @VanLaser mentions in a comment, you can do this by adding <silent> to your map command:

nnoremap <silent> <esc> :noh<return><esc>

:help :map-silent explains:

To define a mapping which will not be echoed on the command line, add "<silent>" as the first argument. Example:

:map <silent> ,h /Header<CR>

The search string will not be echoed when using this mapping. Messages from the executed command are still given though. To shut them up too, add a ":silent" in the executed command:

:map <silent> ,h :exe ":silent normal /Header\r"<CR>

Prompts will still be given, e.g., for inputdialog().

Using "<silent>" for an abbreviation is possible, but will cause redrawing of the command line to fail.