Vim jump to next match without affecting search pattern

Question

Is there a way to jump to a fixed string in VIM without affecting the search history?

Say I want to use the key ;f to jump to the next function, and ;s to the next section.

I can do this:

nmap ;f /function<CR>
nmap ;s /section<CR> 

These work fine, but they overwrite the last search pattern. I want to jump nut keep the old search string.

Answer 1

You can call vim function search()

nmap ;f :call search('function')<CR>
nmap ;s :call search('section')<CR>