`nnoremap <Esc> :nohlsearch<CR>` causes unexpected behavior in Vim 8.2

[theopn]

vim/vim#9430

<C-[>/ is used at the start of various escape sequences which let Vim communicate with the terminal. Mapping any of these keysyms is a bad idea.

The only reliable solution is to not map it.

Because Vim uses <esc>/<C-[> to communicate with the terminal, mapping <Esc> too early in .vimrc caused issues where Vim would start in Replace mode, and certain keymaps like <C-u>, <C-e> would not properly work.

This seems to be fixed in later versions of Vim, for example, my personal system with Vim 9.1 exhibits no issues, but in my school Linux server running 8.2, the issue persists.

I assume this is also a non-issue in Neovim, since the mapping is directly from Kickstart.nvim. The consensus seems to be to avoid mapping <ESC> altogether, so I am not sure how to resolve this without introducing (seemingly) avoidable discrepancy between Kickstart.vim and Kickstart.nvim.