Lucene configure command (and PHP scripts) generating embedded BOMs in the output config.inc file

Lucene configure command (and PHP scripts) generating embedded BOMs in the
output config.inc file

Previously we had great success installing and using Lucene on our
mediawiki system. We are now moving to a new server with a newer PHP and
newer OS.
Running Lucene's "configure" creates the needed output files but they
contain embedded BOMs
VI shows this:
dbname=<feff>wikidb
wgScriptPath=<feff>
hostname=eng-sea-wiki01.west.isilon.com
indexes=/usr/local/lucene-search-2.1.3/indexes
mediawiki=/usr/local/www/wiki
base=/usr/local/lucene-search-2.1.3
wgServer=<feff>https://newwiki.west.isilon.com
Look to be that some php calls are returning string containing prepended
BOMS. I verified this by running a mediawiki script
maintenance/dumpBackup.php which dumped XML with a prepended BOM.
QUESTION: How do I get my Php (Version 5.5.1) to NOT output BOMs?