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How to Strip BOM When Reading UTF-8 Files in Python

Read a UTF-8 text file with Python's pathlib while automatically stripping the Byte Order Mark (BOM) so the first character isn't a hidden glyph.

bom utf8 pathlib
Python 
from pathlib import Path

def read_text_without_bom(file_path):
    """Read a UTF-8 text file, stripping the BOM if present."""
    return Path(file_path).read_text(encoding='utf-8-sig')

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Create a sample file with BOM for demonstration
    sample_path = Path("sample_with_bom.txt")
    …
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