Content-Type: text/shitpost

Subject: History of the Unicode “byte order mark”
Path: you!your-host!walldrug!epicac!thermostellar-bomb-20!twirlip!wescac!berserker!plovergw!shitpost!mjd
Date: 2018-04-04T18:29:06
Newsgroup: rec.pets.unicode-byte-order-mark
Message-ID: <3f62d8d307b6fb82@shitpost.plover.com>
Content-Type: text/shitpost

Tags: itsTrue

The byte order mark (BOM) is a Unicode character, U+FEFF. When information is transmitted as octets, there is a choice about what order to send the halves of each 16-bit quantity. A UTF-16 stream can begin with a BOM character. If the receiver gets the FF before the FE, they can infer that the stream is being transmitted in little-endian format. This is all well-known.

What is less well known is the bit pattern was chosen to memorialize the BOM's original designer, Mark Feff, who died untimely in 1993.