Unhighlighting text highlighted via a search in vi and vim

In vi on Linux--which is actually vim--when you use / or ? to search for a string of text, the found text is highlighted. This is good, but I usually want to turn the highlight off after I've found what I'm looking for. To unhighlight the highlighted text in vim, use this:

:noh

In the 'less' pager, use Esc-u to unhighlight highlighted text.

An alternative, that works in both vi/vim and less, is to search for a string that you know is not in the file.

On HP-UX, neither vi nor more highlight text; they just move the cursor to the found text. 04/15/2005