"root element is missing" - UTF-8

Question

I have 2 identical files, except they are stored in ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8.
"Test ansii.xml":
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><e></e>
"Test utf8.xml":
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><e></e>
When I look at them in Internet Explorer they show correctly. But when I parse them with SAX in java I get an error when I parse the file stored in UTF-8.
import java.io.*;
import javax.xml.parsers.*;
import org.xml.sax.*;
import org.xml.sax.helpers.*;
  public static void testXML(){
    try{
      File ansiiFile=new File("Test ansii.xml");
      File utf8File=new File("Test utf8.xml");
      SAXParserFactory factory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
      SAXParser saxParser = factory.newSAXParser();
      //try ISO-8859-1
      InputSource in = new InputSource(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(ansiiFile),"ISO-8859-1"));
      saxParser.parse(in,new DefaultHandler());
      //try UTF-8
      in = new InputSource(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(utf8File),"UTF-8"));
      saxParser.parse(in,new DefaultHandler());
    }catch(Exception e){
      e.printStackTrace();
  }The first file parses well, but when I parse the file encoded in UTF-8 I get this error:
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The Document root element is missing.
     at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.fatal(Parser2.java:3182)
     at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.fatal(Parser2.java:3170)
     at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.parseInternal(Parser2.java:501)
     at org.apache.crimson.parser.Parser2.parse(Parser2.java:305)
     at org.apache.crimson.parser.XMLReaderImpl.parse(XMLReaderImpl.java:442)
     at javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser.parse(SAXParser.java:345)
     at test.Test.testXML(Test.java:44)
     at test.Test.main(Test.java:25)
Gil

Answer 1

Sigh, I found the answer.
http://www.i18ngurus.com/encyclopedia/byte_order_mark.html
byte order mark
Also known as BOM.
Name given to the Unicode character U+FEFF when used at the beginning of a Unicode byte stream. This invisible character generally know as ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE (ZWNBSP) serves to identify unambiguously the Unicode transformation form used (and especially the byte order) for the stream. Indeed U+FFFE is a noncharacter so there is no risk of misinterpretation.
The following represents the byte signature of the character U+FEFF with the various Unicode Transformation Forms:
Bytes Encoding
00 00 FE FF UTF-32, big-endian
FF FE 00 00 UTF-32, little-endian
FE FF UTF-16, big-endian
FF FE UTF-16, little-endian
EF BB BF UTF-8
Historically the ZWNBSP was also used to indicate non-breaking but this use is now deprecated and replaced by the character U+2060 for that purpose.
http://p2p.wrox.com/archive/xslt/2002-11/79.asp
I suspect you edited the stylesheet using a text editor that inserts the
BOM at the start of the file. For example, I think Windows Notepad does
this.
Some XML parsers accept a BOM at the start of a UTF-8 file, others
don't. For example, the Crimson parser that comes with JDK 1.4 doesn't.
You basically need to find a text editor and an XML parser that agree
with each other about whether or not to use a byte order mark.
Alternatively, use a different encoding for the stylesheet, e.g.
iso-8859-1.
The code above found these strange bytes while expecting '<', and crashed of course.
Gil