This is an example from some code I wrote to read in a MS file that had a superfluous BOM.

my @file;

{
  my $lh;

  open($lh, "<:utf8:crlf", $LogFn) || do {
    Pe "\nlogfile <%s> not found", $LogFn;
    help;
  };

  @file = grep {
                  s/([^\r]+)$/$1/;
                  m{^\s*$} ? undef : $_;
                } <$lh>;
  close $lh;
}

$file[0] =~ s/^\N{U+FEFF}//;    # UTF-8 BOM
[download]

The stuff immediately after the open was to remove the carriage returns, so I could have normal unix line endings.

"Pe", BTW is part of "P". From what I understand, in newer perls, a new keyword, "err" is weaker version of the same (doesn't allow a format statement).

Hope this is of use.