Converting text file to different encoding.

[subhabrata.banerji at gmail.com]

I am having few files in default encoding. I wanted to change their encodings, 
preferably in "UTF-8", or may be from one encoding to any other encoding. 

I was trying it as follows,

   >>> import codecs
   >>> sourceEncoding = "iso-8859-1"
   >>> targetEncoding = "utf-8"
   >>> source = open("source1","w")
   >>> target = open("target", "w")
   >>> target.write(unicode(source, sourceEncoding).encode(targetEncoding))

but it was giving me error as follows,
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#6>", line 1, in <module>
    target.write(unicode(source, sourceEncoding).encode(targetEncoding))
TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, file found

If anybody may kindly suggest how may I solve it. 

Regards,
Subhabrata Banerjee.