Can't create view in postgresql

Question

I have a PostgreSQL table containing some point of interest data. I have a second table with overlapping continent polygons. The following code splits the POI into the continents, but instead of extracting them, the continent ID gets written into a column of the POI data. The query is working so far.

select t3.*, array_to_string(array_cont, '') as conts from
(select ogc_fid, array_agg(conts) as array_cont from
(SELECT t1.*, cont.id AS conts
 FROM continents cont, poi t1
 WHERE st_contains(cont.geom, t1.wkb_geometry)
 order by conts)t1
 group by ogc_fid)t2, poi t3
where t2.ogc_fid = t3.ogc_fid
order by conts;

But when I run this query inside a CREATE VIEW statement, I get the following error:

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW poi_split AS
select t3.*, array_to_string(array_cont, '') as conts from
(select ogc_fid, array_agg(conts) as array_cont from
(SELECT t1.*, cont.id AS conts
 FROM continents cont, poi t1
 WHERE st_contains(cont.geom, t1.wkb_geometry)
 order by conts)t1
 group by ogc_fid)t2, poi t3
where t2.ogc_fid = t3.ogc_fid
order by conts; 
ERROR: syntax error at or near "create"
LINE 1: create or replace view poi_split as
 ^

Sorry for the bad formatting, but as far as I can see, it is no syntax error involved, as the query runs perfect without CREATE VIEW AS. It's even possible to run

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW poi_split AS SELECT * FROM poi;

What am I doing wrong?

• Craig Ringer: I suspect a non-printable character at the start of your input. Are you using psql -f to load the definition from a file, pasting the code, reading it from stdin, ... ?
• leak_my_brain: Normally I load it from a file using psql -f, but while debugging it, I copy/paste the code from the SQL file into the psql prompt. Do you think it's something about encoding?
• Craig Ringer: Possibly not so much encoding as unprintable chars like RTL marks, etc. What editor are you using? Also, what's the PostgreSQL version involved here?
• leak_my_brain: I am using Scratch Editor in elementary OS (Ubuntu based). But the original Code came from a colleague, so maybe there was a problem when I transferred the code. PostgreSQL Version is 9.1 with Postgis 2.0.
• leak_my_brain: Ok, in the meantime, I got it running: I rewrote the query line by line and it seems that there was such a character problem as you suggested.

Answer 1

Ok, I got it running: I rewrote the query line by line and it seems that there was a problematic character hidden in the SQL file. Thanks, @Craig Ringer!