unable to save and exit from vi editor
 

i have done something while changing permission in vi editor. now when i open any file, i am not able to save and exit from it. when i type esc+shift:wq after opening a file. it says cant open file in write mode. please tell what to do? am a new user to fedora 9 and dont know much about it. please help

*any* file? The file is probably just not writable. Or, you don't own the file. Or, the disk is full.

Report here the results of two commands:

whoami

ls -l the.file.you.try.to.edit

In the command above -l is minus lowercase L.

when i open *.pl files i get this error. i can open all files from my root account but from my local login account i am not able to open perl files. but i am able to open *.c, *.php etc files.

Have you checked the permissions as per the previous suggestions?

From a shell prompt, logged in with your standard user account type the following and post the results:
Please replace file.pl with the file you are experiencing problems with

Looks like vi permissions are messed up. I am not that good with vi but I think you have messed with the virc or vi.rc. Hopefully you do not get these errors when logged in as root.
Some options I have are:
1. try a different editor for the timebeing nano or emacs should be there.
2. Create a new user and see if he is able to edit all files.
3. Reinstall vi - if you have the cd/dvd very simple logic can help you reinstall - else you would need to look the rpm or the source code up.
Lesson: Make sure you back up system generated files - specially when you are root.