ARMCLANG: Fatal Error: UTF-16 (LE) Byte Order Mark Detected

Information in this knowledgebase article applies to:

• Arm Compiler 6

SYMPTOM

After adding a source file, for example, "Blinky.c", the compiler returns the following error:

fatal error: UTF-16 (LE) byte order mark detected 'Blinky.c' but encoding is not supported

CAUSE

The byte order mark (BOM) at the start of the UTF-16 file causes the error. UTF-16 is not supported by Arm Compiler 6.

RESOLUTION

Using a third-party editor, convert the encoding of the file to a supported encoding, like UTF-8. For example, in Notepad++, go to Encoding => "Convert to UTF-8". Then re-save the file.

STATUS

The earlier compiler, Arm Compiler 5, supported UTF-16. As of this writing (April 19th, 2017), support for UTF-16 is not planned for Arm Compiler 6.

Note: The Arm C library does support the use of UCS-2, a subset of UTF-16.
For example, the library supports wide character output from swprintf().

MORE INFORMATION

• Unicode.org's FAQ: UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 & BOM

Last Reviewed: Friday, January 8, 2021