UTF-8 without BOM

Question

I have javascript files that I need them to be saved in UTF-8 (without BOM), every time I convert them to the correct format in Notepad++, they are reverted back to UTF-8 with BOM when I open them in Visual Studio. How can I stop VS2010 from doing that?

Another question, is UTF-8 without signature in Visual Studio the same as UTF-8 without BOM?

Answer 1

For vs2010 c++, there will be problems with UTF8 without BOM, when source files contain multi-byte characters(eg. Chinese).

Those characters will not be recognized correctly without BOM, and result in failed compling.

Answer 2

Recently I found this tiny command-line tool which adds or removes the BOM on arbitary UTF-8 encoded files: UTF BOM Utils (new link at github)

Little drawback, you can download only the plain C++ source code. You have to create the makefile (with CMake, for example) and compile it by yourself, binaries are not provided on this page. However, for a software developer this should not be any issue.