hardhat 'pragma solidity' marked as unexpected identifier

Question

I have been working on my ethereum project when face with issue new contracts stops compiling with error message:

blockchain/contracts/Utils.sol:2
pragma solidity ^0.8.9;
       ^^^^^^^^

SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier 

I simply can not create a new contract anymore. It looks like there is some break in the environment.

Have you ever face with this issue? Do you have any thoughts what is wrong here?

Hardhat config is:

import { HardhatUserConfig } from "hardhat/config";
import "@nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox";

const config: HardhatUserConfig = {
  solidity: "0.8.9",
};

export default config;

Answer 1

The issue was in import in .ts file.

My current import for test is shown below:

import { expect } from "chai";
import { ethers } from "hardhat";
import { utils, BigNumber } from "ethers";
import { time, loadFixture } from "@nomicfoundation/hardhat-network-helpers";
import "../contracts/Utils.sol";

Remove import "../contracts/Utils.sol"; from import solves the issue.

It is redundant import, hardhat is able to evaluate type of the contract just by its name in the factory. The root cause though is unclear.