This is getting a bit far afield for the sqlite forum perhaps, but I have yet to come across a version of `sed` that removes a BOM automatically. Certainly not on the mac (not even GNU sed from macports), and not on ubuntu 20.04. And on a side note, there may have been good reasons for BOMs in the past, but I think that time is long gone. It's just a hack, it causes no end of trouble, and it needs to go. The Unicode consortium already did their part, by removing the name BYTE ORDER MARK from the code point.