Eclipse/PyDev - BOM Lexical Error

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

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

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand> writes:
> 
>> 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?
> 
> Let me rephrase: windows editors such as notepad recognize the BOM, and
> then assume (hopefully rightfully so) that the rest of the file is text
> in utf-8 encoding.

But they can only recognize it as a BOM if they assume UTF-8 encoding to 
begin with. Otherwise it could be interpreted as some other coding.