Clear highlights when the cursor moves or a user presses <esc>

[akinsho]

Hi 👋🏿

This is a really great idea 👍🏿 thanks for making the plugin.

I just started using it and noticed though that after triggering one of the mappings the highlights persist in the buffer and never seem to get wiped till I manually run :nohlsearch I wonder if there could be an option to clear the highlight automatically once the cursor moves or if a user presses esc etc.

[ironhouzi]

Hi and thank you so much for wanting to participate and contribute ideas.

I have taken your suggestion into some consideration, and I must admit that it sounds like a good idea. I am however not sure how to implement such behavior in a meaningful way. Personally I have a mapping to quickly toggle highlight:

vim.api.nvim_set_keymap(
  'n',
  '<leader>3',
  ':lua vim.o.hlsearch = not vim.o.hlsearch<CR>',
  { noremap = true, silent = true }
)

In general I often lean towards plugins doing as little as possible, so I leave it to the end user to define additional behavior outside the core functionality. However, I am always open to trying out new things and challenge my preconceived notions.

I am open to implementing this behavior in a separate branch to give myself some time with the new behavior and see if I really like it.

I think I like the latter of your two suggestions more, as I prefer explicit over implicit if I'm not 100% sure that the implicit behavior carries out something I'd manually do 99% of the time. That will just entail a key map:

vim.api.nvim_set_keymap(
  'n',
  '<esc>',
  ':lua vim.b.stim_set = false; vim.go.hlsearch = false<cr>',
  { silent = true }
)

Not sure if I have to set stim_set = false, but it does work.

I will try this new mapping out for some time and if I like it I might include it in the project, either in code or in documentation.
Please try it out and provide feedback.

Thanks again for the great suggestion.