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byte order mark
Also known as BOM.
Name given to the Unicode character U+FEFF when used at the beginning of a Unicode byte stream. This invisible character generally know as ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE (ZWNBSP) serves to identify unambiguously the Unicode transformation form used (and especially the byte order) for the stream. Indeed U+FFFE is a noncharacter so there is no risk of misinterpretation.
The following represents the byte signature of the character U+FEFF with the various Unicode Transformation Forms:
| Bytes | Encoding | | 00 00 FE FF | UTF-32, big-endian | | FF FE 00 00 | UTF-32, little-endian | | FE FF | UTF-16, big-endian |
| FF FE | UTF-16, little-endian | | EF BB BF | UTF-8 |
Historically the ZWNBSP was also used to indicate non-breaking but this use is now deprecated and replaced by the character U+2060 for that purpose. |
Article submitted by: Thierry Sourbier
Last modified: 2008-05-03
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