Odd Unexpected T_VARIABLE
<p>I see questions about this error all over the internet and most of them are unique typos or misunderstandings of syntax.</p>

<p>However, this is very odd. Here is my code, the ENTIRE file (intended to be accessed by AJAX):</p>

<pre><code>&lt;?php

$con = mysql_connect("(censored)", "(censored)", "(censored)") or die(mysql_error());

mysql_select_db("(censored)_users", $con) or die(mysql_error());

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY id") or die(mysql_error());

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

    echo $row['user'] . "&lt;br /&gt;";

}

?&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>This was copy and pasted from another script on my site to list users; the only modification was modifying the <code>echo $row['user']</code> line because it contained a lot more.</p>

<p>This gives the error:</p>

<pre>
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in (blah blah blah blah).php on line 1
</pre>

<p>The first thing that struck me as odd about that was how it was supposedly on line <em>1</em>- there's whitespace and a <code>&lt;?php</code> tag.</p>

<p>Then, after some frustration, I commented all that out and before it placed <code>echo "Hello World!";</code></p>

<p>Well, it gave me a similar error:</p>

<pre>Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in (blah blah blah blah blah).php on line 1</pre>

<p>The rest of the PHP on my site is working fine. What could be causing errors on this particular script?</p>
