What's the difference between UTF-8 and UTF-8 without BOM?

Question

What\'s different between UTF-8 and UTF-8 without a BOM? Which is better?

Answer 1

I look at this from a different perspective. I think UTF-8 with BOM is better as it provides more information about the file. I use UTF-8 without BOM only if I face problems.

I am using multiple languages (even Cyrillic) on my pages for a long time and when the files are saved without BOM and I re-open them for editing with an editor (as cherouvim also noted), some characters are corrupted.

Note that Windows' classic Notepad automatically saves files with a BOM when you try to save a newly created file with UTF-8 encoding.

I personally save server side scripting files (.asp, .ini, .aspx) with BOM and .html files without BOM.