Python SQL: Error reading and executing SQL file

Question

I'm trying to red and execute a SQL file in Python using sqlalchemy. Should be simple, right?

conn=sqlalchemy.create_engine('mssql+pyodbc://' + DSN).connect()
query = open('../toy_example.sql',encoding="utf-8").read()
trans = conn.begin()
conn.execute(query)
trans.commit()

I get this error

ProgrammingError: (pyodbc.ProgrammingError) ('42000', "[42000] [Microsoft][ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server][SQL Server]Incorrect syntax near '\ufeff'. (102) (SQLExecDirectW)")
[SQL: drop table temp;

With t0 as (select 1+1)
select * into temp from t0]

Why am I getting this error? I'm not sure if this is a file encoding error or a SQLAlchemy error. Ideally, this should be simple.

EDIT:

This code works fine, assuming the table temp exists:

conn=sqlalchemy.create_engine('mssql+pyodbc://' + DSN).connect()
query = "drop table temp; With t0 as (select 1+1 t) select * into temp from t0"
trans = conn.begin()
conn.execute(query)
trans.commit()

EDIT 2:

For reference, here is a link to the file toy_example.sql.
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=62746453331292257227

Answer 1

(I saved it as encoded UTF-8 codepage 65001 in SQL Server Management Studio)

The UTF-8 option near the top of the "Encoding" list in the SSMS "Advanced Save Options" dialog is "UTF-8 with signature"

That option will write the Unicode BOM (Byte Order Mark), encoded as \\xEF\\xBB\\xBF , at the beginning of the file

If we read the file in Python using the standard "utf-8" encoding we get the Unicode BOM character \ included in the string

with open(r"C:\Users\Gord\Desktop\SQLQuery1.sql", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    s = f.read()
print(repr(s))  # '\ufeffSET NOCOUNT ON;'

However, if we read the file using Python's "utf-8-sig" encoding then we get the string with the BOM character removed

with open(r"C:\Users\Gord\Desktop\SQLQuery1.sql", encoding="utf-8-sig") as f:
    s = f.read()
print(repr(s))  # 'SET NOCOUNT ON;'