Robin2 -
They are .ino files. I agree that no one will want to read so much code.
The sketch is several months old and has been compiled successfully 100's of times. The problem was found yesterday when I removed a function from this particular .ino file. At first, I commented the removed function out and everything was fine. Then I deleted the function altogether and it failed to compile. After trying a number of other things I removed the function line by line to find where the error was introduced. It was that that led me to realize it was the lines themselves and not the code that was the issue.
Good suggestion on the "strange character". I will try cleaning it and report what happens.