Eclipse/PyDev - BOM Lexical Error

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message <87d3rorf2f.fsf at web.de>, Diez B. Roggisch wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand> writes:
> 
>> What exactly is the point of a BOM in a UTF-8-encoded file?
> 
> It's a marker like the "coding: utf-8" in python-files. It tells the
> software aware of it that the content is UTF-8.

But if the software is aware of it, then why does it need to be told?

> Naming it "BOM" is obviously stupid, but that's the way it is called.

It is in fact a Unicode BOM character, and I can understand why it’s called 
that. What I’m trying to understand is why you need to put one in a UTF-8-
encoded file.