First column of vim highlighted yellow and won't go away
The reason it does that is because of the
set hlsearch
command and because you apparently searched for ^.. To turn the highlighting off until the next search, execute
:nohl
or just search for something nonsensical, e.g. /alsdfkjslk. To turn the highlighting off permanently, create your own ~/.vimrc and put this in it:
set nohlsearch
The previous search is stored in ~/.viminfo. You can change it in there, or use :nohl to turn it off until the next search.