use v5.12;
use warnings;
use Devel::Peek;
use utf8;


my $str = "\x{FEFF}['what','ever']";

$str =~ s/^\x{feff}//;

Dump($str);

##</code><code>##

SV = PV(0xe9cea8) at 0x24f1008
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,pPOK,UTF8)
  PV = 0x2565b28 "['what','ever']"\0 [UTF8 "['what','ever']"]
  CUR = 15
  LEN = 24