Macro won't exit insert mode with Esc

Question

I record this macro:

ia^[sb^[

It should open insert mode, write a, exit, replace with b, then exit insert mode again.

you can bind it to @w with:

:let @w='ia^[sb^['

For whatever reason instead of a line with b I get the following a^[sb^[

Is there something I can do to get the esc key working in my macros? I've tried using <Esc> instead of ^[ as well to no avail.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

It looks like your ^[ is not a literal <Esc>. More likely a ^ followed by a [ (two characters);

You are supposed to insert a literal escape character (a single character displayed as ^[). This is done with Ctrl+V followed by Esc.