Strange Character

[sicoanimal]

I am trying to do some text manipulation to allow for include statements to be created from a custom tag in a string.  I have got it working but I seem to get a strange character at the beginning of the output from the include.

 

The strange character does not show up on the page (unless I enclose the output in <pre> tags) but is there in the source code, which causes extra spacing between the first two paragraphs. I have included an image of the elusive character as it disappears when I past the source in here.

 

This is my code:

$val = "This is a bit of text to go before the script.

%SCRIPT(inc.php)%

There should be a bit of text from the inc.php file on its own line above.";
  preg_match('/(.*?)%SCRIPT\(([a-z_.-]+)\)%(.*)/s', $val, $match);
  array_shift($match);
  print_r($match);
  echo "<br><hr><br>";
  echo "\n<p>";
  $match[0] = str_replace(array("\r\n", "\n","\r"), "<br>", $match[0]);
  $match[0] = str_replace("<br><br>", "</p>\n", $match[0]);
  $match[2] = str_replace(array("\r\n", "\n","\r"), "<br>", $match[2]);
  $match[2] = str_replace("<br><br>", "\n<p>", $match[2]);
  echo $match[0];
  include($match[1]);
  echo $match[2];
  echo "</p>";

 

inc.php:

<?php
  echo "<p>This is the text in the external file.</p>";
?>

 

This is the output I get from the script:

This is a bit of text to go before the script.


This is the text in the external file.

There should be a bit of text from the inc.php file on its own line above.

 

Any ideas what it is or why it is showing up?

 

[attachment deleted by admin]