diff --git a/package_linter.py b/package_linter.py
index 00c016f..922890f 100755
--- a/package_linter.py
+++ b/package_linter.py
@@ -493,11 +493,13 @@ class App(TestSuite):
     @test()
     def bad_encoding(self):
 
-        cmd = "file --mime-encoding $(find %s/ -type f) | grep 'iso-8859-1'" % self.path
+        cmd = "file --mime-encoding $(find %s/ -type f) | grep 'iso-8859-1' || true" % self.path
         bad_encoding_files = subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell=True).decode('utf-8').strip().split("\n")
         for file_ in bad_encoding_files:
+            if not file_:
+                continue
             file_ = file_.split()[0]
-            yield Info("%s appears to be encoded as latin-1 / iso-8859-1. Please consider converting it to utf-8 to avoid funky issues. Something like 'iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t utf-8 SOURCE DEST' should do the trick." % file_)
+            yield Info("%s appears to be encoded as latin-1 / iso-8859-1. Please consider converting it to utf-8 to avoid funky issues. Something like 'iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t utf-8 SOURCE > DEST' should do the trick." % file_)
 
 
     #######################################