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.
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.
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.
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>
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
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.
q another character begins recording a macro. press q again to finish recording.