re: msg56782

Yes, of course I can explicitly write the BOM. I did realize that after 
my first post ( my-'duh' :-[ ).

But after playing some more, I do think this issue has become a 
worthwhile one. My second post msg56780 asks that utf_8 be tolerant 
of the 3-byte sig BOM, and uf_16_[be]e be tolerant of their BOMs, 
which I argue is consistent with "be liberal on what you accept".

A second half of that message suggests that it might be worth 
considering something like a write_bom parameter with utf_16 
defaulting to True, and utf_16_[bl]e defaulting to False.

My  third post (m56782) may actually represent a bug. I have a 
unittest for this and would be glad to provide (although I need 
to reduuce a larger test to a simple case). I will look at this 
again, and re-pester you as required.

Regards (and thanks for the reply),
..jim