How do I turn on search highlighting from a vim script?

Question

If I do either of the following two:

call search("searchString")

exec "/ searchString"

From a script, then vim does the search but does not highlight the results, even though hlsearch. Doing the same searches from outside a script highlights the results.

Thanks

Answer 1

You could use :set hlsearch to enable and :set nohlsearch to disable highlighting.

Answer 2

You need to put this in your .vimrc file

" Switch syntax highlighting on, when the terminal has colors
" Also switch on highlighting the last used search pattern.
if &t_Co > 2 || has("gui_running")
  syntax on
  set hlsearch
endif

The .vimrc file is usually located in your home directory, or you can find it using "locate .vimrc"

Answer 3

Just found out the answer myself:

call search(l:searchString)
call matchadd('Search', l:searchString)