Getting `ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended` due to blank line

What's strange is that a SQL script someone wrote (which apparently was running fine for months) seemed to return an ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended error when executed through the Linux command line, as shown below:

oracle@dbhost:/home/oracle> /u01/sqlplus/instantclient_12_2/sqlplus ahmed/welcome1@//dbhost:1521/orcl @/home/oracle/script.sql

SQL*Plus: Release 12.2.0.1.0 Production on Sun Sep 19 12:31:27 2021

Copyright (c) 1982, 2016, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Last Successful login time: Sun Sep 19 2021 12:30:50 -04:00

Connected to:
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options

            ) B
            *
ERROR at line 2:
ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended


Disconnected from Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Advanced Analytics and Real Application Testing options

What's odd is that when I pasted the same exact SQL statement to Oracle SQL Developer as is, it executed and ran just fine:

Turns out sqlplus wasn't happy with this blank line in the script. I removed it and everything was fine:

Like I said, this previously worked fine, but since the database had already gone through a few quarterly CPU patching cycles, I honestly can't point to what triggered this not to work anymore.