title: What is correct usage to go around vim missing "insert one char" command?
body: <p>This is possibly not a good question for SO, but it's been bugging me for <em>years</em>, and Google didn't know, so let's give it a shot, as it does affect my programming work on weekly basis:</p>
  
  <p>I often find myself in situation where one char is missing, like "=" instead of "==", a missing space, surrounding something with quotes/brackets, etc.</p>
  
  <p><strong>So, why doesn't <em>vim</em> have a proper command to insert a single character?</strong> By proper I mean, supports count and repeating with <code>.</code>.</p>
  
  <p>What is the rationale, and what is the correct usage pattern that I am missing, which makes this feature unnecessary? I seem to need the all the time, so there must be some reason it has not been added to original <em>vi</em> already.</p>
  
  <p>I know adding a simple basic keybinding like <code>:nmap &lt;Space&gt; i_&lt;Esc&gt;r</code> is easy enough, but when doing just a quick edit in a new environment, that's rather inconvenient, and this simple version does not work quite properly anyway.</p>
  
  <p>PS. If there in fact is a <em>default</em> binding to insert just one char with <em>total two</em> keystrokes and remain in command mode, similar to <code>r</code> to replace one char with two keystrokes, I promise a bounty of 100 to the first answer which tells me what it is.</p>