[c] Compilation error: stray ‘\302’ in program etc

I got the same with a character that visibly appeared as an asterisk, but was a UTF-8 sequence instead.

Encoder * st;

When compiled returned:

g.c:2:1: error: stray ‘\342’ in program
g.c:2:1: error: stray ‘\210’ in program
g.c:2:1: error: stray ‘\227’ in program

342 210 227 turns out to be UTF-8 for ASTERISK OPERATOR.

Deleting the '*' and typing it again fixed the problem.