wire / magic /
utf8-bom
UTF-8 BOM (EF BB BF) A UTF-8 byte-order mark is the 3-byte sequence 0xEF 0xBB 0xBF — the UTF-8 encoding of U+FEFF. It carries no endianness for UTF-8; it serves only as a signature that the following text is UTF-8. Unicode does not recommend its use and many tools treat it as optional/undesirable.
magic kind signature status standard verification verified tier B file-signature@1
aka: UTF-8 BOM · U+FEFF · EF BB BF · byte order mark
file signature magic: EF BB BF⧉ copy @ offset 0
ascii: \xef\xbb\xbf
.txt text/plain
spec: The Unicode Standard (U+FEFF byte order mark)
EF BB BF is the UTF-8 serialization of the code point U+FEFF (ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE used as BOM). UTF-8 has no byte-order ambiguity, so this is purely a format signature, not an endianness marker. Unicode neither requires nor recommends a UTF-8 BOM; it can break shebang lines, JSON parsers, and shell scripts if present. Detect it before decoding; many parsers strip a leading EF BB BF.
agent: curl -H 'accept: application/json' wire.phall.io/magic/utf8-bom⧉ copy
or /magic/utf8-bom.json ⧉ copy
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