'use strict';
  module.exports = x => {
  	if (typeof x !== 'string') {
  		throw new TypeError('Expected a string, got ' + typeof x);
  	}
  
  	// Catches EFBBBF (UTF-8 BOM) because the buffer-to-string
  	// conversion translates it to FEFF (UTF-16 BOM)
  	if (x.charCodeAt(0) === 0xFEFF) {
  		return x.slice(1);
  	}
  
  	return x;
  };