Mapping in vimrc causes bizarre arrow behaviour

Question

I am a happy VIM user, although I admit I\'m quite far from being fluent. I found this nice post: Vim clear last search highlighting and I thought I\'d become a better perso

Answer 1

This solution preserves the ESC mapping to :nohlsearch.

The comment on this answer explaining why this is happening tells us that the root cause is the TermResponse behavior of vim. This can be compensated for by wrapping the mapping in an autocommand for the TermResponse event.

This ensures that the binding doesn't happen until after the term response is set, which prevents Esc from also sending a string like ]>1;3201;0c to vim.

Change your line in vimrc to this:

augroup no_highlight
    autocmd TermResponse * nnoremap  :noh
augroup END

The augroup commands are not strictly necessary, but they prevent multiple mappings when you reload your vimrc without quitting vim.

EDIT: If you also use a graphical vim like Gvim or Macvim, the TermResponse event will not fire. Assuming you use a single vimrc, you'll need some additional code like

if has('gui_running')
  nnoremap   :nohlsearch
else
  " code from above
  augroup no_highlight
    autocmd TermResponse * nnoremap  :noh
  augroup END

end