gistfile1.py

#! /usr/bin/env python
# Reads in a file from stdin and converts its encoding from 8859 to utf-8
# Writes to stdout and lines that fail to stderr
# Example usage ./convert.py < in.txt 1> out.txt 2> errors.txt

import sys
for line_number, line in enumerate(sys.stdin.readlines()):
    try:
        sys.stdout.write(unicode(line, "8859").encode("utf-8"))
    except UnicodeDecodeError as e:
        sys.stderr.write("%5d %s"%(line_number + 1, line))