Editor introduces extra character at begining of file.

I was configuring a VirtualHost file on my Apache server and rather than using windows Putty and the VI editor, this time I used the SmartFTP editor. It's very cool and slick and easy but try as I might Apache would puke on the file. Finally I moved the config file to my computer and looked at it with the Netbeans editor and it had a "-" as the first character in the file which might represent just about anything. I deleted the character and moved the file back to the server and Apache purred like a kitten.

So what's with this extra character that the SmartFTP editor wants to put in secretly and not telling me?

Please post the system information from the menu: Help->About "System Information" dialog. Maybe SmartFTP has been writing a UTF8 BOM?


Please post the system information from the menu: Help->About "System Information" dialog. Maybe SmartFTP has been writing a UTF8 BOM?

+- System -----------------------------
Microsoft Windows 7
Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)

CPU Speed : 3000 MHz
Total Memory : 5119 MB
Free Memory : 1699 MB

+- SmartFTP ---------------------------
Version : 4.0.1160.0
Time Stamp : 2011-01-17 12:32:47
Platform : x64
Id : 400114400
Maintenance : 2012-06-21
Days in use : 583

+- Language ---------------------------
en-US

+- Internet Explorer ------------------
Version : 9.0.8112.16421

+- Winsock ----------------------------
Winsock : 2.2