For debugging purposes, I need to recursively search a directory for all files which start with a UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM). My current solution is a simple shell script: find -type f | while read file do if [ "`head -c 3 -- "$file"`" == $'\xef\xbb\xbf' ] then echo "found BOM in: $file" fi done Or, if you prefer short, unreadable one-liners: find -type f|while read file;do [ "`head -c3 -- "$file
![Elegant way to search for UTF-8 files with BOM?](https://cdn-ak-scissors.b.st-hatena.com/image/square/98d6f053a97a87156775f60757c60865d0f2c47d/height=288;version=1;width=512/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sstatic.net%2FSites%2Fstackoverflow%2FImg%2Fapple-touch-icon%402.png%3Fv%3D73d79a89bded)