Can't create view in postgresql

Question

I have a PostgreSQL table containing some point of interest data. I have a second table with overlapping continent polygons. The following code splits the POI into the continents, but instead of extracting them, the continent ID gets written into a column of the POI data. The query is working so far.

select t3.*, array_to_string(array_cont, '') as conts from
(select ogc_fid, array_agg(conts) as array_cont from
(SELECT t1.*, cont.id AS conts
    FROM continents cont, poi t1
    WHERE st_contains(cont.geom, t1.wkb_geometry)
    order by conts)t1
    group by ogc_fid)t2, poi t3
where t2.ogc_fid = t3.ogc_fid
order by conts;

But when I run this query inside a CREATE VIEW statement, I get the following error:

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW poi_split AS
select t3.*, array_to_string(array_cont, '') as conts from
(select ogc_fid, array_agg(conts) as array_cont from
(SELECT t1.*, cont.id AS conts
    FROM continents cont, poi t1
    WHERE st_contains(cont.geom, t1.wkb_geometry)
    order by conts)t1
    group by ogc_fid)t2, poi t3
where t2.ogc_fid = t3.ogc_fid
order by conts;    

ERROR:  syntax error at or near "create"
LINE 1: create or replace view poi_split as
        ^

Sorry for the bad formatting, but as far as I can see, it is no syntax error involved, as the query runs perfect without CREATE VIEW AS. It's even possible to run

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW poi_split AS SELECT * FROM poi;

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Ok, I got it running: I rewrote the query line by line and it seems that there was a problematic character hidden in the SQL file. Thanks, @Craig Ringer!