G'day BernieC,
Regex issues:
-
Your first regex, s/^\xef\xbb\xbf//g, anchors to the start of the string:
later ef bb bf sequences will not be removed.
-
Your second regex, s/\xef\xbb\xbf//, has no /g modifier:
only the first ef bb bf sequence will be removed.
What you need is s/\xef\xbb\xbf//g:
$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '
my $x = "\x{ef}\x{bb}\x{bf}123,,,\x{ef}\x{bb}\x{bf}456";
say "Full string:";
system "echo $x | hexdump -Cv";
$x =~ s/\xef\xbb\xbf//g;
say "All BOM sequences removed:";
system "echo $x | hexdump -Cv";
'
Full string:
00000000 ef bb bf 31 32 33 2c 2c 2c ef bb bf 34 35 36 0a |...123,,,
+...456.|
00000010
All BOM sequences removed:
00000000 31 32 33 2c 2c 2c 34 35 36 0a |123,,,456
+.|
0000000a
To remove other characters:
-
Non ISO-8859-1: y/\x00-\xff//cd
-
Non 7-bit ASCII: y/\x00-\x7f//cd