[Python-Dev] Unicode byte order mark decoding

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> So there is a standard for the UTF-8 signature, and I know of
> applications which produce it.  While I agree with you that Python's
> codecs shouldn't produce it (by default), providing an option to strip
> is a good idea.

I would personally like to see an "utf-8-bom" codec (perhaps better
named "utf-8-sig", which strips the BOM on reading (if present)
and generates it on writing.

> However, this option should be part of the initialization of an IO
> stream which produces Unicodes, _not_ an operation on arbitrary
> internal strings (whether raw or Unicode).

With the UTF-8-SIG codec, it would apply to all operation modes of
the codec, whether stream-based or from strings. Whether or not to
use the codec would be the application's choice.

Regards,
Martin