Failure to parse XML file with reversed UTF-8 BOM

[Anil Prasad]

Hi Team,

Below is my input file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<book>
<title>This is test file</title>
</book>

If is will try to parse this file. I have got the error 'lxml.etree.XMLSyntaxError: Start tag expected, '<' not found, line 1, column 1'.

This is a starting text is a BOM. If i am open this file in notepad or another editor it is not show.

If i will try to resolve this issue then remove the BOM in this file after that i will parse this file through lxml and do another things.

The issue is if i will replace this text and save this file after my file modification date is change.

I want to know how to parse this file without removing BOM.

I request to you please handle this type of situation and solve this issue as soon as possible.

Python : sys.version_info(major=3, minor=7, micro=1, releaselevel='final', serial=0)
lxml.etree : (4, 2, 5, 0)
libxml used : (2, 9, 8)
libxml compiled : (2, 9, 8)
libxslt used : (1, 1, 32)
libxslt compiled : (1, 1, 32)

Regards,
Anil Prasad

[scoder (scoder)]

Could it be that this is an issue with your input file? Try opening it with a hexeditor to see if the first bytes are really the UTF-8 BOM: 0xEF,0xBB,0xBF. If so, please attach the file instead of copying it into the text.

[scoder (scoder)]

Test works, cannot reproduce.
https://github.com/lxml/lxml/blob/fd81ebb9269e5955eca8d4e9668b1a1daf9e00c0/src/lxml/tests/test_elementtree.py#L3255-L3262

[Anil Prasad (anilkumarg4)]

I have attached the xml file for your reference.

[scoder (scoder)]

The BOM in that file has the wrong byte order. Instead of 0xEF, 0xBB, 0xBF and the "<", it starts with 0xBB, 0xEF, "<", 0xbf. This is invalid. See FAQ no. 5 in https://unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html#bom5