Strip UTF-8 BOM when running under Ruby 1.8.

      # Reads given filename into string

      def self.read(filename)

        File.open(filename, "r:"+@@encoding) {|f| f.read }

        File.open(filename, "r:"+@@encoding) {|f| self.strip_utf8_bom(f.read) }

      end

      # Takes care of removing UTF-8 byte order mark in Ruby 1.8 which

      # doesn't have built-in encodings support.

      def self.strip_utf8_bom(string)

        string.sub(/\A\xEF\xBB\xBF/, "")

      end

    end