title: JSON.parse() causes error: `SyntaxError: Unexpected token in JSON at position 0`
body: <p>I'm writing my first application in Node.js. I am trying to read some data from a file where the data is stored in the JSON format.</p>
  <p>I get this error:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>SyntaxError: Unexpected token ﻿ in JSON at position 0</p>
  <p>at Object.parse (native)</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>Here is this part of the code:</p>
  <pre><code>//read saved addresses of all users from a JSON file
  fs.readFile('addresses.json', function (err, data) {
      if (data) {
          console.log(&quot;Read JSON file: &quot; + data);
          storage = JSON.parse(data);
  </code></pre>
  <p>Here is the <code>console.log</code> output (and I checked the .json file itself, it's the same):</p>
  <pre><code>Read JSON file: ﻿{
  
      &quot;addresses&quot;: []
  
  }
  </code></pre>
  <p>That seems to me like a correct JSON. Why does <code>JSON.parse()</code> fail then?</p>