Vim: search and highlight but do not jump

Question

The super star (*) key in Vim will search for the word under the cursor and jump forward to the next match. The user can jump to the next matches with the n key.

Answer 1

I haven't seen this one yet:

nmap * "syiw: let @/ = @s

It's very short and does not involve jumping around which can result in blinking.

Explanation: copy the word under cursor to s register and then set the search register (/) to the content of s register. The search register is not writeable directly, that's why the let is necessary and hence the silent to keep vim's command line clean.