my $fh = new FileHandle("< $file");
        if (! $fh) {
        die "failed to open list file '$file': $!";
        }
        my $marker;
        if (2 != read($fh, $marker, 2)) {
        die "Failed to read the first 2 bytes from $file";
        }
        if ($marker eq $UNICODE_FFFE) {
        binmode($fh, ":encoding(utf8)");
        }
        else {
        $fh->seek(0, 0);
        }