How to save a Vim macro that contains “Escape” key presses?

Question

I use the following Vim macro a lot (it puts the current line inside XML tags):

I^[A

So I saved it into my .vimrc

Answer 1

For a macro:

:let @e='^[I^[A'

Where ^[ is just one char formed by hitting CTRL+VESC (CTRL+QESC on Windows). Note the escape right at the beginning of the macro.

See :help c_CTRL-V in Vim for more information.

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For those who've landed on this post looking for how to add ESC to a mapping, the answer is different.

Literally type <ESC>, thus:

:nnoremap E IA

See :help key-notation in Vim for more info.