Open files of different encoding type automatically.

any_encoding.py

import codecs

# pip install chardet

file_location = './sometestfile.log'

from chardet.universaldetector import UniversalDetector

def get_file_encoding_type(filename):
    """
    Return a string describing the probable encoding of a file
    """
    encoding = None
    with open(filename, 'rb') as f:
        u = UniversalDetector()
        for line in f:
            u.feed(line)
        u.close()
        if u.result['encoding']:
            encoding = u.result['encoding']
    return encoding


encoding = get_file_encoding_type(file_location)
if encoding is not None:
    with codecs.open(file_location, 'r', encoding) as f:
        while True:
            try:
                line = f.next()
            except UnicodeDecodeError:
                print "skipped"
                continue
            except StopIteration:
                break
            # check if string is found in line
            print line