• From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
• To: "'Rick Jelliffe'" <rjelliffe@a...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 10:07:55 +0100

In UTF-8, at the start of a file it is 
> just a nonsense character, useless, out-of-place, a sign of 
> bad programming, and it messes up encoding detectors

I'd have said it's a three-byte sequence which tells you pretty reliably
that you're dealing with a UTF-8 encoded file - provided of course that you
are looking for it. Agreed, BOM is a misnomer.

I'm not defending the decision to add it to the XML spec by means of an
erratum, however.

Michael Kay

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: XSD - Validator problem
    • From: Tony Graham <Tony.Graham@M...>

• References:
  • XSD - Validator problem
    • From: "Sebastian Hinterwälder"<sebi-hinterwaelder@g...>
  • RE: XSD - Validator problem
    • From: "Gerald Sheehan" <gerald.sheehan@a...>
  • Re: RE: XSD - Validator problem
    • From: "Sebastian Hinterwälder"<sebi-hinterwaelder@g...>
  • Re: RE: XSD - Validator problem
    • From: "Fraser Goffin" <goffinf@g...>
  • RE: RE: XSD - Validator problem
    • From: "Gerald Sheehan" <gerald.sheehan@a...>
  • RE: RE: XSD - Validator problem
    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
  • RE: RE: XSD - Validator problem
    • From: Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@a...>