Sometime Today, abhilash kumar assembled some asciibets to say:
Well the directory has 777 permissions, and I mean any user "xyz" not only "root".
But the point is that as the file is readonly how is vi allowing to do forced write, and change the ownership of file? Even if it allows this then
I already explained it. vi isn't writing to the file, it's deleting and creating a new file. Your directory permissions allow it.
To delete/create files, you need write permissions on the *directory*, not on the file.
Philip