How to Find and Remove UTF-8 Files with BOMs Efficiently?

Searching for UTF-8 Files with BOM the Elegant Way

Finding files with a BOM (Byte Order Mark) in UTF-8 encoding can be necessary for debugging purposes. A common approach involves using shell scripts or commands like 'find' and 'sed'. But is there a simpler and more elegant way to achieve this?

One succinct command that both finds and removes BOMs presents itself as an appealing option:

find . -type f -exec sed '1s/^\xEF\xBB\xBF//' -i {} \;

This command leverages the 'find' utility to identify all files within a specified directory, excluding binary files. It then employs 'sed' to substitute the BOM character sequence with an empty string in the first line of every targeted file, effectively removing it.

Note that this command modifies the contents of files, so exercising caution when dealing with binary files is crucial.

Alternatively, if you only wish to list the files containing BOMs without modifying them, you can employ:

grep -rl $'\xEF\xBB\xBF' .

This command uses 'grep' to search recursively for files containing the BOM sequence and displays a list of them.

While using text editors or macros for this task is possible, the simplicity and efficiency of the above commands make them a preferable choice.

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