Highlight during search not working in vim

1
votes

I have in my ~/.vimrc:

set hlsearch

Indeed, when I start searching for a word such as "dude"

/dude

the word "dude" highlights nicely as I start typing "dude" after the slash. However, after I hit enter to signify that I am finished typing in my search, the highlighting goes away, and then I cannot see in my script where the word "dude" occurs. When I hit "n" for next, it takes me to the next occurrence of "dude", but again it is not highlighted.

I am on Mac OS in the terminal using vim. 

:hi Search

returns: xxx term=reverse ctermbg=11 guibg=Yellow

What can I do to keep highlighting when I search for the word of interest in vim?

2
vim
What does :verbose set hlsearch? say? - glts
@glts that does give any output... hmmm - Cokes
Type it exactly as shown: :verbose set hlsearch?. If there's no output then you haven't :set hlsearch in your vimrc. - glts
@glts it just says "hlsearch" after I type it exactly as shown. - Cokes
FWIW, Vim has better tools for searching than /?nN: :il dude or even :vim dude % | cw. - romainl

2 Answers

2
votes

I needed:

hi Search term=reverse cterm=NONE ctermfg=grey ctermbg=blue

At first I had cterm=xterm and neglected term=reverse, which somehow led to the behavior above...

1
votes

It seems like the highlighting definitions in your Search group aren't recognized / visible, but those of IncSearch are. Choose a different colorscheme, fix / override the Search definition, or as a quick "don't make me think" fix, mirror the latter to the former via:

:hi clear Search
:hi link Search IncSearch