`:noh' turns off the highlighting of the current
matches.
YAY!
I've been using Arthur Krewat's method, basically /asdf<CR>,
for a long time now. Now I have:
map <Leader><Leader> :nohlsearch<CR>
in my .vimrc (<Leader> is backslash, so after /foo<CR>, \\ turns
off the highlighting).
One other really useful thing, given issues with tabs vs spaces,
that I'll share here, comes just before this new entry:
function! ToggleTabs()
if &list
set nolist
else
set list listchars=tab:>.,trail:>,precedes:<
endif
endfunction
map <Leader>t :call ToggleTabs()<CR>
With this, \t makes tabs visible, or invisible if they are
currently visible. Despite the name it also highlights trailing
whitespace (the highlight is a bit subtle though).
Chris