Kwrite and Kate mess up files with this data in them. They do not read the special char in '' at ALL!!!!
if(sig[0]=='‰' &&

Are Kwrite and Kate trashy programs?

What Windows type files are you referring to? Do other text editors such as VIM and Emacs read the files correctly.

Yes, gedit and emacs are the other 2 I have. They both work perfectly.

You didn't answer the rest of the question. What type of files are they? I also think you need to give a bit more detail about the problem so that someone can help you solve it. If you meant that KATE and Kwrite can't read special characters in a programming file e.g. \n, then maybe you need to convert the text files to unix type files using the dos2unix command. Another option would be to try and change to change the encoding in KATE or Kwrite by going to Settings -> Configure KATE/Kwrite -> Editor -> Open/Save -> File Format -> End Of Line and select DOS/Windows. I am not sure if this will resolve your problems, but its worth a try.

I've personally never had such issues when I have done python programming on Windows using notepad, VIM or IDLE and then transferred the files to Linux. I use KATE as my main GUI text editor and it always works well.

I should not have confused you by saying Windows type files (they're just plain text).

I also tried creating a file from linux and pasting the data in. When I open it with kate it does not display or save the character in '' at all. I even examined the file with a hex editor: confirming for SURE that the character was left out. Try it for yourself. The kate version I have is 2.4.1.

Is it a bug they have now fixed? If so, that's an extremely bad bug! I have no idea how many files are mangled from using that program!

The version of KATE I am using is 2.5.5 which comes with KDE 3.5.5. If what you describe is a bug, then its highly likely that this has been fixed.