This sounds plausible, but I have really no idea of why it works :) I found it by doing a mistype (like it often happens in vim), and didn't see it mentioned in any article that would try to get to the bottom of it yet.
>I found it by doing a mistype (like it often happens in vim)
Ha, I probably found it by some similar way, maybe in vim or maybe in DOS / Windows / Linux at the command prompt or in some curses or terminal application.
Why does that work? Is it because Alt + some_key combos generate an escape sequence starting with the actual ESC character? I know that happens with many function key combos, don't remember or not sure about Alt combos.