Message
SyntaxError: illegal character (Firefox) SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token (Chrome)
Error type
What went wrong?
There is an invalid or unexpected token that doesn't belong at this position in the code. Use an editor that supports syntax highlighting and carefully check your code against mismatches like a minus sign ( - ) versus a dash ( – ) or simple quotes ( " ) vs non-standard quotation marks ( “ ).
Examples
Mismatched characters
Some characters look similar, but will cause the parser to fail interpreting your code.
“This looks like a string”; // SyntaxError: illegal character 42 – 13; // SyntaxError: illegal character
This should work:
"This is actually a string"; 42 - 13;
Forgotten characters
It's easy to forget a character here or there.
var colors = ['#000', #333', '#666']; // SyntaxError: illegal character
Add the missing quote for '#333'.
var colors = ['#000', '#333', '#666'];
Hidden characters
When copy pasting code from external sources, there might be invalid characters. Watch out!
var foo = 'bar'; // SyntaxError: illegal character
When inspecting this code in an editor like Vim, you can see that there is actually a zero-width space (ZWSP) (U+200B) character.
var foo = 'bar';<200b>