Re: [Chicken-users] BOM in a Scheme source file

[Elf]

from that page:
While UTF-8 does not have byte order issues, a BOM encoded in UTF-8
   may be used to mark text as UTF-8. It only identifies a file as UTF-8
   and does not state anything about byte order.[1] Quite a lot of
   Windows software (including Windows Notepad) adds one to UTF-8 files.
   However in Unix-like systems (which make heavy use of text files for
   configuration) this practice is not recommended, as it will interfere
   with correct processing of important codes such as the hash-bang at
   the start of an interpreted script.It may also interfere with source
   for programming languages that don't recognise it. For example, gcc
   reports stray characters at the beginning of a source file, and in
   PHP, if output buffering is disabled, it has the subtle effect of
   causing the page to start being sent to the browser, preventing custom
   headers from being specified by the PHP script. The UTF-8
   representation of the BOM is the byte sequence EF BB BF, which appears
   as the ISO-8859-1 characters "" in most text editors and web              
browsers not prepared to handle UTF-8.

meaning its not a true BOM regardless with known fail characteristics. 
assuming wikipedia can be trusted.  at least its sourced in this case.

-elf

On Sat, 8 Sep 2007, Graham Fawcett wrote:

> On 9/8/07, Pierpaolo Bernardi <address@hidden> wrote:
> > UTF8 has no BOM.  A BOM in a utf8 file should be there only if you
> > put it there.
>
> Not true.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_Order_Mark
>
> G
>
>
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