title: How to remove %EF%BB%BF in a PHP string
body: <p>I am trying to use the Microsoft <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing" rel="nofollow">Bing</a> API.</p>
  
  <pre><code>$data = file_get_contents("http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Ajax.svc/Speak?appId=APPID&amp;text={$text}&amp;language=ja&amp;format=audio/wav");
  $data = stripslashes(trim($data));
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The data returned has a ' ' character in the first character of the returned string. It is not a space, because I trimed it before returning the data. </p>
  
  <p>The ' ' character turned out to be %EF%BB%BF.</p>
  
  <p>I wonder why this happened, maybe a bug from Microsoft?</p>
  
  <p>How can I remove this %EF%BB%BF in PHP?</p>