I am baffled but I think Paul's suggestion that maybe a special character had gotten into the file seems likely. I now have it working with a configuration that appears to be identical to what was NOT working earlier. Here's the full configuration file:
sysPath = require 'path'
exports.config =
# See http://brunch.io/#documentation for documentation.
files:
javascripts:
joinTo:
'javascripts/app.js': /^app/
'javascripts/vendor.js': /^(bower_components|vendor)/
'test/javascripts/test-vendor.js': /^test(\/|\\)(?=vendor)/
stylesheets:
joinTo:
'stylesheets/app.css': /^app/
'stylesheets/vendor.css': /^(bower_components|vendor)/
templates:
precompile: true
root: 'templates'
joinTo: 'javascripts/app.js' : /^app/
modules:
addSourceURLs: true
# allow _ prefixed templates so partials work
conventions:
ignored: (path) ->
startsWith = (string, substring) ->
string.indexOf(substring, 0) is 0
sep = sysPath.sep
if path.indexOf("app#{sep}templates#{sep}") is 0
false
else
startsWith sysPath.basename(path), '_'