Actually, having numerical prefixes to commands is not a feature constrained to modal editors. In something like Notepad, to replace three next words, you need

Actually, having numerical prefixes to commands is not a feature constrained to modal editors. In something like Notepad, to replace three next words, you need to press shift+ctrl and hit right arrow three times, then just start typing. The only inefficient thing here is a repetition of left arrow, and it's solved in Emacs, where to do the same, you'd press Ctrl+3 Ctrl+<right> and then started typing (if you have delete-selection-mode enabled). So it's very similar to <esc>c3w in terms of complexity, really. On the other hand - I don't quite understand what lutusp means by "modes" - by what he writes here, I'd say that Emacs enters "command mode" after pressing (for example) C-u in exactly the same way Vim does after <esc>. Actually any editor with commands bound to key sequences can be said to be modal in the light of what he writes. And Shift+Right and then writing something is a command bound to a sequence of keystrokes, which means I'm using a modal editor right now, writing in a textarea in Chrome. I don't think that's what lutusp wanted to say, though.