How to fix "E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line"

The other day I was trying to open a text file to work on it but surprisingly on my every attempt to open the file, the below error was coming up and not allowing me to edit or save the file.

Error:

$ vi IIG.TEST.2014-04-02.2014-04-07-00.26.30.000000.out
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I3^I18
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I3^I0
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I3^I0
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I3^I0
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I3^I0
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I3^I4
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I3^I28
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I3^I65
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I6^I0
E575: viminfo: Illegal starting char in line: ^I+^I3^I47
E136: viminfo: Too many errors, skipping rest of file

This happens because the user's viminfo file gets corrupted somehow and certain characters are not interpretted so everytime you try to open the original file, it throws out "Illegal starting char in line"

You can delete the user's viminfo file from the user's home directory using which you were getting the error. 

NOTE: You can find .viminfo inside every user's home directory starting with a dot (.) as it is a hidden file.

This file contains the history of all the vim editor records i.e the files edited and the arguments you used inside the editor etc. 

No deleting .viminfo file is not going to affect any of your existing work, It is the same way you erase your cache history but it does not affects any of your work done.

No, this file gets automatically created inside user's home directory as soon you start working on any text file using vi editor.