blog/handling-byte-order-mark-characters.html

<!DOCTYPE html>     <html class="no-js"> <head> <meta charset='utf-8'/><meta http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible' content='IE=edge'/><meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1'/><meta name='keywords' content='groovy, bom_chars, unicode, encoding'/><meta name='description' content='Handling Byte Order Mark (BOM) characters in Groovy'/><title>The Apache Groovy programming language - Blogs - Handling Byte-Order-Mark Characters in Groovy™</title><link href='../img/favicon.ico' type='image/x-ico' rel='icon'/><script src='../js/matomo.js'></script><link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='../css/bootstrap.css'/><link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='../css/font-awesome.min.css'/><link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='../css/style.css'/><link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='../css/../css/prettify.min.css'/> </head><body> <div id='fork-me'> <a href='https://github.com/apache/groovy'> <img style='position: fixed; top: 20px; right: -58px; border: 0; z-index: 100; transform: rotate(45deg);' src='../img/horizontal-github-ribbon.png'/> </a> </div><div id='st-container' class='st-container st-effect-9'> <nav class='st-menu st-effect-9' id='menu-12'> <h2 class='icon icon-lab'>Socialize</h2><ul> <li> <a href='https://groovy-lang.org/mailing-lists.html' class='icon'><span class='fa fa-envelope'></span> Discuss on the mailing-list</a> </li><li> <a href='https://twitter.com/ApacheGroovy' class='icon'><span class='fa fa-twitter'></span> Groovy on Twitter</a> </li><li> <a href='https://groovy-lang.org/events.html' class='icon'><span class='fa fa-calendar'></span> Events and conferences</a> </li><li> <a href='https://github.com/apache/groovy' class='icon'><span class='fa fa-github'></span> Source code on GitHub</a> </li><li> <a href='https://groovy-lang.org/reporting-issues.html' class='icon'><span class='fa fa-bug'></span> Report issues in Jira</a> </li><li> <a href='http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/groovy' class='icon'><span class='fa fa-stack-overflow'></span> Stack Overflow questions</a> </li><li> <a href='http://www.groovycommunity.com/' class='icon'><span class='fa fa-slack'></span> Slack Community</a> </li> </ul> </nav><div class='st-pusher'> <div class='st-content'> <div class='st-content-inner'> <div><div class='navbar navbar-default navbar-static-top' role='navigation'> <div class='container'> <div class='navbar-header'> <button type='button' class='navbar-toggle' data-toggle='collapse' data-target='.navbar-collapse'> <span class='sr-only'></span><span class='icon-bar'></span><span class='icon-bar'></span><span class='icon-bar'></span> </button><a class='navbar-brand' href='../index.html'> <i class='fa fa-star'></i> Apache Groovy™ </a> </div><div class='navbar-collapse collapse'> <ul class='nav navbar-nav navbar-right'> <li class=''><a href='https://groovy-lang.org/learn.html'>Learn</a></li><li class=''><a href='https://groovy-lang.org/documentation.html'>Documentation</a></li><li class=''><a href='/download.html'>Download</a></li><li class=''><a href='https://groovy-lang.org/support.html'>Support</a></li><li class=''><a href='/'>Contribute</a></li><li class=''><a href='https://groovy-lang.org/ecosystem.html'>Ecosystem</a></li><li class=''><a href='/blog'>Blog posts</a></li><li class=''><a href='https://groovy.apache.org/events.html'></a></li><li> <a data-effect='st-effect-9' class='st-trigger' href='#'>Socialize</a> </li><li class=''> <a href='../search.html'> <i class='fa fa-search'></i> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </div> </div><div id='content' class='page-1'><div class='row'><div class='row-fluid'><div class='col-lg-3'><ul class='nav-sidebar'><li><a href='./'>Blog index</a></li><li class='active'><a href='#doc'>Handling Byte-Order-Mark Characters in Groovy™</a></li></ul></div><div class='col-lg-8 col-lg-pull-0'><a name='doc'></a><h1>Handling Byte-Order-Mark Characters in Groovy™</h1><p><div style='display:flex;padding:0.2ex'><span>Author: </span><i>Paul King</i></div><br/><span>Published: 2024-07-11 08:00PM</span></p><hr/><div class="paragraph"> <p>A <a href="https://www.javacodegeeks.com/remove-byte-order-mark-characters-from-file.html">recent article</a> showed how to process <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark">Byte Order Mark (BOM)</a> characters within text files when coding in Java. In particular, often manual removal of those characters might be needed when processing text files. The article showed how to remove the BOM characters when using the <code>InputStream</code> and <code>Reader</code> classes as well as how to do it using <code>NIO</code> functionality. It also showed how the <code>BOMInputStream</code> class in <a href="https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-io/">Apache Commons IO</a> could be used. It automatically skips over the BOM characters.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>Those examples can be run as is in Groovy (albeit after fixing a bug in the first example) but the (complete!) idiomatic solution in Groovy is:</p> </div> <div class="listingblock"> <div class="content"> <pre class="prettyprint highlight"><code data-lang="groovy">println new File('file.txt').text</code></pre> </div> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>That’s right, Groovy automatically detects the encoding, and removes BOM characters, when using the <code>getText()</code> method along with others like <code>eachLine</code>, <code>splitEachLine</code>, <code>readLines</code>, <code>withReader</code>, and <code>filterLine</code>. The same functionality can be obtained using the <code>newReader</code> method too on files and URLs.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>When needed there are variants that let you specify the encoding should you wish to explicitly declare it. In that case, you’d need to handle the BOM characters manually.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>Groovy’s methods like <code>getText</code> call an underlying <code>CharsetToolkit</code> class. 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