title: Python reading from a file and saving to utf-8
body: <p>I'm having problems reading from a file, processing its string and saving to an UTF-8 File.</p>
  
  <p>Here is the code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>try:
      filehandle = open(filename,"r")
  except:
      print("Could not open file " + filename)
      quit() 
  
  text = filehandle.read()
  filehandle.close()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I then do some processing on the variable text.</p>
  
  <p>And then </p>
  
  <pre><code>try:
      writer = open(output,"w")
  except:
      print("Could not open file " + output)
      quit() 
  
  #data = text.decode("iso 8859-15")    
  #writer.write(data.encode("UTF-8"))
  writer.write(text)
  writer.close()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This output the file perfectly but it does so in iso 8859-15 according to my editor. Since the same editor recognizes the input file (in the variable filename) as UTF-8 I don't know why this happened. As far as my reasearch has shown the commented lines should solve the problem. However when I use those lines the resulting file has gibberish in special character mainly, words with tilde as the text is in spanish. I would really appreciate any help as I am stumped....</p>