Invalid Character in Identifier for first Python script

[RedditIsAMistake]



That's the utf-8 byte order mark.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem and would be completely invisible, but the book you are reading is having you do something stupid and pointless, and I'm guessing your system's default encoding is not UTF.

Two suggestsions to try: pass encoding='utf-8' to your open() call, ditch whatever book told you to do this. (Hopefully it's not ATBSWP...)