Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@szydan
Last active February 5, 2024 15:16
Show Gist options
  • Star 31 You must be signed in to star a gist
  • Fork 6 You must be signed in to fork a gist
  • Save szydan/b225749445b3602083ed to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save szydan/b225749445b3602083ed to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
<U+FEFF> character showing up in files. How to remove them?
1) In your terminal, open the file using vim:
vim file_name
2) Remove all BOM characters:
:set nobomb
3) Save the file:
:wq
// taken from:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7297888/ufeff-character-showing-up-in-files-how-to-remove-them
Another recipe using awk
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1068650/using-awk-to-remove-the-byte-order-mark
awk '{ if (NR==1) sub(/^\xef\xbb\xbf/,""); print }' INFILE > OUTFILE
@Sebastian-D
Copy link

This helped me.

The vim method did not work. The awk recipe only removes <U+FEFF> (or as it is shown in vim) from the first column. I modified it to remove ALL <U+FEFF>

awk '{ gsub(/\xef\xbb\xbf/,""); print }' INFILE > OUTFILE

@joshuapinter
Copy link

See this StackOverflow Answer for a better place for this information: https://stackoverflow.com/a/15137601/293280

@mmichael0413
Copy link

Worked perfectly, thank you!

@henadzit
Copy link

Thank you!

@gustavoghioldi
Copy link

thanks @Sebastian-D

@apfalz
Copy link

apfalz commented Feb 21, 2020

thank you for this.

@rajanverma-me
Copy link

A quick method if you don;t want to go into code. Just copy the file content and paste it in gedit (or notepad) editor. Copy the same content again from editor and replace in original file. You will get the clean file.

@topsailor102
Copy link

Thanks a lot!

@richistron
Copy link

you are a Fucking legend!

@snukone
Copy link

snukone commented Apr 26, 2023

awesome, many thanks for this gist! @Sebastian-D also thanks to you. i used your awk command to solve my problem :)

@tlhenvironment
Copy link

thamks

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment