With the Byte Order Mark in the the version.txt file (used for getting version info from SCM) a '?' is displayed as the first character in the build version on some screens.

The EOF character is also displayed as a space (most views) or a new line/string termination character (e-mail notifications).

The first is resolved by eliminated the BOM from the file, the later by using groovy's trim() method on the string.

Build version string:
${groovy:repositories.get('tfs_repo').sourceViewSupport.readSourceAsString(vars.getValue('tfs_collection')+'/'+vars.getValue('branch_name')+'/build-version.txt').trim()}.${repositories.get("tfs_repo").getRevision()}.${vars.get("patch").increase()}