How to remove ï»¿ from a PHP page

Question

I'm developing a small website and to include the header in using PHP's include() function. However directly before any code brought in from the include, there's this weird ï»¿ on the page.

Here's code for page where it's happening

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
    <title>Things and Stuff | Source Files</title>
    <!-- Style Sheets/Scripts/Misc Stuff -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/main.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/gmod.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/alerts.css">
    <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script src="scripts/cycle.js"></script>
</head>

<body>

<?php include('./utilities/header.php'); ?>

<!-- rest of the page from here down... -->

EDIT W/ SOLUTION

I figured it out thanks to help from below. To fix I opened the file in Notepad++, set it to PHP, and at the top under Encoding, selected ANSI (found that was = to UTF-8 w/o BOM) and it worked!

This is the best for you: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3255993/how-do-i-remove-%C3%AF-from-the-beginning-of-a-file](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3255993/how-do-i-remove-%C3%AF-from-the-beginning-of-a-file) — Provie9, Aug 27 '16 at 22:40

Jean-François Fabre · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-27T22:45:29.897

4

Your header file contains a Byte Order Mark header, not clearly visible be text editors which understand them and do not print them.

Compilers/parser, on the other hand, expect full ASCII, and don't understand BOM marks.

Solution: Remove the 3 first bytes of your header file with an hex editor or a text editor set to ASCII or UTF8 without BOM encoding and it will work.

below screenshot of the file encoded in UTF8 with BOM with 3 first chars highlighted (using frHed)

If I remove the 3 first bytes it works. OR: open with Notepad++ and change encoding to ASCII, save, voilà.

edited Aug 27 '16 at 22:45

answered Aug 27 '16 at 22:40

Jean-François Fabre

131,796
23
122
195

Doesn't the byte order mark usually mean each character will be multiple bytes, meaning a lot of null bytes in the file? – Alexander O'Mara Aug 27 '16 at 22:44
That will by UTF16 format. In that case, removing the 3 first bytes won't work, but changing the encoding to ASCII or UTF8-noBOM also works. – Jean-François Fabre Aug 27 '16 at 22:48
This worked! Thank you very much! I used the option at the bottom of changing with Notepad++ – FirstOrderKylo Aug 27 '16 at 22:53

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 27 '16 at 22:40

1

Check your PHP file encoding. Try using UTF8 without boom, and make sure your php has no empty spaces at the top of the file.

answered Aug 27 '16 at 22:40

Asmir Zahirovic

267
2
10

How to remove ï»¿ from a PHP page

2 Answers2