`edit` tool adds UTF-8 BOM (`EF BB BF`) to files on Windows
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Descripción
### Describe the bug
On Windows, Copilot CLI's `edit` tool prepends a UTF-8 Byte Order Mark (`\xef\xbb\xbf`)
to the output file after a modification, even when the original file had no BOM.
### Affected version
v1.0.49
### Steps to reproduce the behavior
**Steps to reproduce**
1. Create a UTF-8 file without BOM (e.g., via PowerShell with explicit UTF-8 no-BOM write)
2. Use the `edit` tool to replace any `old_str` with a `new_str`
3. Read the output file's first 3 bytes:
```powershell
$b = [IO.File]::ReadAllBytes("test.md")
"{0:X2} {1:X2} {2:X2}" -f $b[0], $b[1], $b[2]
# Expected: first 3 bytes of actual content (e.g., "23 20 74" for "# t")
# Actual: EF BB BF ← UTF-8 BOM
```
### Expected behavior
no edit failure
### Additional context
**Evidence (v1.0.49, Windows 11 / PowerShell 7, 2026-05-19)**
Byte-level measurement before and after `edit` tool call:
```
Before edit: CRLF=3 LF-only=0 bytes=35 BOM=false
After edit: CRLF=3 LF-only=0 bytes=42 BOM=true
Hex header: EF BB BF 6C 69 6E 65 20 6F 6E 65 0D 0A ...
```
The `edit` tool correctly normalizes line endings for `old_str` matching (LF `old_str`
matched CRLF file content successfully), but the **output file gains a BOM** and retains
CRLF — so the normalization only applies to matching, not to the written output.
**Impact**
- Python `open(encoding='utf-8')` reads the BOM as the `\ufeff` character prepended to
the file content, breaking JSON parsers, YAML parsers, and string-prefix matching.
- `git diff` displays BOM bytes as binary noise, cluttering diffs.
- `.gitattributes eol=lf` does **not** strip BOM — git treats it as opaque file content.
Without a dedicated pre-commit hook, BOM is committed to the repository permanently.
**Requested change**
Use `new UTF8Encoding(encoderShouldEmitUTF8Identifier: false)` (or equivalent) when
writing files on Windows, so that the output is BOM-free UTF-8 — the format expected by
virtually all modern tooling and consistent with behavior on macOS/Linux.
**Related**
- #1148 — CRLF injection (same root cause area: Windows file API defaults)
**Workaround (current)**
After using the `edit` tool, re-write the file with Python to strip BOM:
```python
with open(path, encoding='utf-8-sig') as f:
content = f.read() # strips BOM
with open(path, 'w', encoding='utf-8', newline='\n') as f:
f.write(content)
```
Guía de contribución
Línea de trabajo
Comienza reproduciendo la operación de edición en Windows con un archivo UTF-8 sin BOM y, a continuación, inspecciona la ruta de escritura de archivos de la herramienta de edición en Windows. El cambio estará completo cuando el archivo modificado siga sin BOM, conservando su contenido y los finales de línea CRLF existentes; verifica los tres primeros bytes con la comprobación de PowerShell del issue.
Escrito por el modelo de indexación a partir del texto del issue.
Evaluación
- Stack tecnológico
- powershell
- Área
- cli, operating-systems
- Tipo de issue
- Error
- Dificultad
- 3/5
- Tiempo estimado
- 1-2 días
- Estado de actividad
- Tranquilo
- Claridad
- Bien especificado
- Aptitud para principiantes
- 65/100