Whenever you are in a buffer and you want to search for a word under cursor you yank it to a (default) register and then / + Ctrl + R + " to paste it.
This process can get very repetitive quickly. Don’t get me wrong - if you want to search for a whole sentence, you can follow these exact steps. However, if you want to quickly search for a word under the cursor, you can avoid this process completely.
- Press * to search for a word under cursor in the forward direction.
- Press # to search for a word under cursor in the backward direction.