Odd Unexpected T_VARIABLE
===

I see questions about this error all over the internet and most of them are unique typos or misunderstandings of syntax.

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

    <?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'] . "<br />";
    
    }
    
    ?>

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

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

The first thing that struck me as odd about that was how it was supposedly on line _1_- there's whitespace and a `<?php` tag.

Then, after some frustration, I commented all that out and before it placed `echo "Hello World!";`

Well, it gave me a similar error:
<pre>Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING in (blah blah blah blah blah).php on line 1</pre>

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