Why doesn't search for word under cursor (* and #) turn on search highlighting and how do I enable it?

Question

I can't find info in help about whether it should or shouldn't turn on highlighting, but I find it strange that I have to press n or N after * or # to turn on search highlighting.

How do I enable this in vim if that's 'normal' behaviour.

I've got only these lines in my vimrc related to search highlighting.

if !has('nvim')
    set smartcase
    set hlsearch      " highlight search terms
    set incsearch     " show search matches as you type
endif

Answer 1

You can hook up the hlsearch command like so:

nnoremap * :set hlsearch<CR>*
nnoremap # :set hlsearch<CR>#

And if you want to highlight the current word without moving the cursor you can add the N movement afterwards:

nnoremap * :set hlsearch<CR>*N
nnoremap # :set hlsearch<CR>#N