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 have the following in my .vimrc, which I think works better than the other alternatives:

" Put word under cursor into search register and highlight
nnoremap  * :let @/='\<=expand("")\>':set hls
vnoremap  * :
  \let old_reg=getreg('"')let old_regtype=getregtype('"')
  \gvy:let @/=substitute(
  \escape(@", '/\.*$^~['), '\_s\+', '\\_s\\+', 'g')
  \gV:call setreg('"', old_reg, old_regtype):set hls