<CR> not recognized as variable in VIM vimrc using PuTTY

Solution 1:

For some reason you are running Vim in compatible mode, and if you have a ~/.vimrc it should automatically be going into nocompatible mode. Whatever the reason, I suggest you override it by adding this to your ~/.vimrc:

:set nocompatible

The problem is that in compatible mode, many of Vim's extended feature set is disabled, including recognizing <...> notation in mappings as special key codes.

If doing :set nocompatible doesn't work, try manually setting 'cpoptions' to the Vim non-compatible default:

:set cpoptions=aABceFs

See:

:help 'compatible'
:help 'cpoptions'

(The single quotes are part of the command.)

Edit: From the discussion in comments it appears your Vim install is broken and the system vim.vim ftplugin is overriding the 'compatible' or 'cpoptions' settings. Upgrading from 7.2 to 7.3 may help.