encoding/json: parser can't handle Byte Order Mark

[Flokey82]

Trying to parse a json file that contains a byte order mark results in an error
[]byte{0xEF, 0xBB, 0xBF} (the first 3 bytes of the file)

// LocaleMessage represents a single translation for an entry in the localization map.
type LocaleMessage struct {
Message string json:"message"
Description string json:"description"
}

lj := make(map[string]LocaleMessage)
if err := json.Unmarshal(data, &lj); err != nil {
return nil, err
}

The error message returned while trying to unmarshal:
invalid character 'ï' looking for beginning of value

The json file in question is from a chrome extension that ships with ChromeOS (I seem not to be able to attach the json file -> unsupported file type).

When I trim the first 3 bytes, it parses just fine.

[bradfitz]

This has come up before. We don't like BOMs. And JSON shouldn't have them anyway. (XML might have a slightly better excuse)

You should just strip them yourself. You can write a function or new io.Reader wrapper to do it. They probably already exist on godoc.org.