What I'd like is to map one key, e.g. F4, so that pressing F4 will toggle the visibility of search highlights, and so that starting a new search enables visibility no matter the current visibility.
What I've tried:
:nohlsearch temporarily disables highlight visibility without turning the hlsearch setting off, but it does not toggle visibility back again.:set hlsearch! does toggle on/off, but I don't want to toggle the hlsearch setting off, just the visibility setting. If hlsearch is off then it doesn't come back automatically with a new search.There doesn't seem to be an opposite form of :nohlsearch and the command itself has problems being called from a function.
I've found similiar questions, but they don't provide an answer.
Update:
The first comment provides exactly what I was asking for, reproduced below:
let hlstate=0
nnoremap <F4> :if (hlstate == 0) \| nohlsearch \| else \| set hlsearch \| endif \| let hlstate=1-hlstate<cr>
(N.B. for anyone using this --- cramming the map onto one line instead of using a function is necessary since you can't effect a change on highlighting from inside a function.)
Related question for slightly different functionality: https://stackoverflow.com/a/16750393/1176650
" ctrl+c to toggle highlight.
let hlstate=0
nnoremap <c-c> :if (hlstate%2 == 0) \| nohlsearch \| else \| set hlsearch \| endif \| let hlstate=hlstate+1<cr>
Now just press ctrl+c to toggle highlight. Only quirk is you gotta press it twice after a search to toggle off highlight because searching doesn't increment the counter.