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# Search Backward Through A File

There are a number of ways to search for a match in a file. One I use quite often is hitting `*` while the cursor is over the word I want to find matches for. It searches forward jumping to the next occurrence of that word.

It turns out there is a way of doing the same thing, but searching backward to the previous occurrence of the word. If you hit `#` with the cursor over a word, it will jump backward through the file until it finds an occurrence of that word. Keep hitting `#` to keep searching backward.

See `:h #` for more details.