Navigate between (form feed) sections

Question

Background:

• Vim :help states that a section begins after a form-feed (^L) in the first column [*].
• In normal mode ]] or [[ can be used to navigate to the next or previous section (respectively).
• However, it also stops at the next/previous { in the first column.

[*] I am ignoring that a section also starts at some troff macros

My problem:

• I want to navigate between sections only, i.e., I want motions like ]] and [[ that only stop at the beginning of a section.

Questions:

1. Is there already a built-in motion that solves my problem?
2. Sure, I could just map some key combination to /^<C-L><CR>), but is there a better way? In particular, I don't like the idea of it messing with my search history.

PS:

• To be honest, my real problem is that sometimes it is easier for me (and gcc!) to work with one HUGE file instead of splitting into several translation units. So I divide it into sections and I want to jump fast between sections without stopping at each function block. If you have a better approach, I would appreciate a suggestion as a comment.
• Even though I am mainly editing C files, I guess I wouldn't care (that much) if a solution overrides the default behavior of [[ and ]]. Not overriding would be a plus, though.

Answer 1

Yes, one problem with [[ and ]] is that they kind of try to do several things at the same time. Another problem is that redefining what a section is is not exactly simple.

Now, :help [[ hints at making your own mappings and there are a few default ftplugins that map [[ and ]] to work in a specific way. So you should probably consider something like this:

" in after/ftplugin/c.vim
nnoremap <buffer> [[ <Cmd>call search("^\<C-l>", 'b')<CR>
nnoremap <buffer> ]] <Cmd>call search("^\<C-l>")<CR>

Note the use of :help search(), which doesn't pollute register /.

If you want to use them outside of C, remove the <buffer> attribute and put them in your vimrc:

" in .vimrc
nnoremap [[ <Cmd>call search("^\<C-l>", 'b')<CR>
nnoremap ]] <Cmd>call search("^\<C-l>")<CR>