On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 09:00:17AM -0700, Doug Ewell wrote: > The Unix and Linux world is very > opposed to the use of BOM in plain-text files, and if they feel that way > about UTF-8 they probably feel the same about UTF-16.
Why? The problems with a BOM in UTF-8 have to do with it being an ASCII-compatible encoding. (I'd guess that if there are any Unixes that use EBCDIC, the same problems would apply to UTF-EBCDIC.) Pretty much the only reason one would use UTF-16 is to be compatible with a foreign system, and then you use the conventions of that system. Also, look at the output of file: n2404r.doc: Microsoft Office document data file.utf8: UTF-8 Unicode English text file.utf16: Little-endian UTF-16 Unicode English character data file.iso: data file_list: ASCII text There's basically two categories here; data or text. But UTF-16 is not considered text; it's considered data, like a Word file. Most Unix users would treat a UTF-16 encoded file the same way; as a format to be converted from, or edited in a word processor only. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] "It's not a habit; it's cool; I feel alive. If you don't have it you're on the other side." - K's Choice (probably referring to the Internet)