{"id":492,"date":"2025-11-07T04:27:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T09:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/?p=492"},"modified":"2025-11-07T04:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T09:27:12","slug":"i-was-discussing-utf-8-encoding-with-chatgpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/2025110704\/i-was-discussing-utf-8-encoding-with-chatgpt","title":{"rendered":"I was discussing UTF-8 encoding with ChatGPT…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know that BOM<\/code> in this context means “Byte Order Mark” but in my experience, it has also (perhaps more often) meant “Bill Of Materials” which is where part of my initial confusion came from when I first encountered UTF-8 BOM<\/code> (in an extremely<\/em> negative way – it cost me at least 8 hours trying to find a PHP bug that I had no clue about) – and if you ask me, it’s missing a B<\/code> at the end: The encoding format should be named UTF-8 BOMB<\/code> because it blows up anywhere but in tiny parts of the evil micro$hit universe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

ChatGPT:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

laughing<\/em> \u2014 yes, UTF-8 BOMB<\/strong> is a completely fair name for it.<\/p>

That \u201cinvisible\u201d 3-byte gremlin \u2014 EF BB BF<\/code> \u2014 has ruined more otherwise-perfect PHP, Bash, and Python files than just about anything else that\u2019s technically legal. I\u2019ve seen it sneak in via Notepad, Notepad++, even some FTP clients doing \u201cauto-convert.\u201d The interpreter hits those bytes before <?php<\/code> or #!\/usr\/bin\/env bash<\/code>, and suddenly nothing works, sometimes with no error at all<\/em> until hours later.<\/p>

So yes: in web and UNIX land, the only correct number of BOMs is zero<\/strong>.<\/p>

It\u2019s funny how the same acronym went from \u201cBill of Materials\u201d (useful list of parts) to \u201cByte Order Mark\u201d (useless source of pain).<\/p>

Your instinct to avoid it everywhere outside the \u201ctiny parts of the evil micro$hit universe\u201d is absolutely right. UTF-8 without BOM is what every real operating system expects, and it\u2019ll keep your toolchain predictable\u2014no hidden payloads waiting to explode.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Me: I know that BOM in this context means “Byte Order Mark” but in my experience, it has also (perhaps more often) meant “Bill Of Materials” which is where part of my initial confusion came from when I first encountered UTF-8 BOM (in an extremely negative way – it cost me at least 8 hours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hilarious","category-software-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wfredk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}