Well, it's not a mode. It's recording, but you can freely change between modes while recording and this will be part of the recording. I believe you can even start a recording in one mode and exit it in another, although this has limited use.
It is most certainly a mode, from a usability standpoint. :q no longer works once in record mode; which fits the definition of modality.
It's the Q character. That usually happens to me when I mistype a semicolon rather than colon when trying to quit.
Q enters ex mode
q is used to start a recording
That was imprecision on my part. I should have said "Q key" instead -- the capitalization was to make it stand out.
Yeah; With basically everything using q to quit, the inconsistency is infuriating. It would be bad enough if it did nothing, but instead of changes modes that you need to explicitly escape before the real quit works.
The best way to stop doing it accidentally is to start doing it deliberately, then the muscle memory will catch up.
@ <somethinge else> -> replay recording of buffer <something else>
Good summary, but minor addition: `q` is also a valid input. Hitting `qq` starts recording in the `q` buffer, and it stops when the key is pressed a third time in normal mode.
I recently had the happy discovery that q: puts you into the : buffer, which is your command history. You can navigate to a recent comment and just enter to execute. Bonus point for it being the opposite of :q
q another character begins recording a macro. press q again to finish recording.