M-x mystery

[Silvio Levy <levy@msri.org>]

Dear emacs folks

in trying to debug some bad interactions between vip.el (VI emulation)
and icicles, I've come against an obstable I can't surmount: M-x
sometimes ceases to be M-x and becomes instead ESC-x.  

Minimal example: I run "emacs -q -l foo.el" where foo.el contains this code:

(defun doit ()
  "run test"
  (interactive)
  (defvar vip-mode-map (make-keymap))
  (define-key vip-mode-map "\e" 'kill-line)
  (use-local-map vip-mode-map)
)

Then I into a scratch buffer and type M-x doit<RET> -- so far so good.
After that, when I type M-x the behavior, it is as if I had typed ESC
and x: the current line is killed and an x is inserted.

Any ideas about what I'm doing wrong?

Silvio