As a developer I want to be able to edit the login-config.xml file (and all others) with text editors that may insert a BOM in the file to specify encoding. Currently the JBoss logic that reads/parses the login-config.xml does not support BOM(s). Rather here is the error log report if a BOM exists.

2009-02-16 14:45:08,182 DEBUG [org.jboss.security.auth.login.XMLLoginConfigImpl] Try loading config as XML, url=file:/C:/jboss-4.2.3.GA/server/default/conf/login-config.xml

2009-02-16 14:45:08,229 DEBUG [org.jboss.security.auth.login.XMLLoginConfigImpl] Failed to load config as XML

org.jboss.xb.binding.JBossXBException: Failed to parse source: Content is not allowed in prolog. @ unknown[1,1]

at org.jboss.xb.binding.parser.sax.SaxJBossXBParser.parse(SaxJBossXBParser.java:193)

at org.jboss.xb.binding.UnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(UnmarshallerImpl.java:158)

Also, since this error is reported very early in the log file, when errors caused by this are observed, it is not at all obvious that this error has already occurred. It would greatly increase developer productivity it the JBoss product can work with/without file BOMs.