Full path seen as relative by Mathematica when exporting

Question

I'm having difficulties exporting some image files. I send the usual

Export["C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\filename.png", dataPlot];

But instead of exporting to the path, it sees it as a relative path:

Export::nodir: Directory C:\Users\user\Documents\C:\Users\user\Desktop\ does not exist. >>
Export::noopen: Cannot open C:\Users\user\Desktop\filename.png. >>

It has always worked fine, and it actually doesn't give any problems if I try Export in every other notebook. What can be the cause of it?

EDIT

Copying and pasting the code into a new notebook doesn't help, so the problem must be in the code.

Here is the code and here is an example input file

Answer 1

It seems as though your file path in the Export call has a \[NoBreak] symbol in it. This seems to be an invisible symbol that you can only see when looking at the raw form of the code:

Cell["\<\
a = plot[1]; 
Export[\"\[NoBreak]C:\\\\Users\\\\user\\\\Desktop\\\\pulses2.png\", a]\
\>", "Input",
 CellChangeTimes->{}]    

No clue how that got there, although my guess would be that you copy and pasted the file path from somewhere else and somehow it got inserted along the way.

If you retype the same export call, i.e.

a = plot[1];
Export["C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\pulses2.png", a]

then it should work without issue.