Python window - encoding problem/special characters

[StefanHaglund1]

Hi All,

How do we best handle special characters when using the python window?

I have this code:

>>> import arcpy
>>> mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument("CURRENT")
... for lyr in arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd):
...  print lyr

which prints out my layers without special characters, but when it gets to the first layer with a special character in the name I get this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 3, in <module>
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe4' in position 3: ordinal not in range(128)

So, how can I get around this problem?
(Using 10.1, Build 3035)

Thanks!

[BenHolmes]

Picked an idea for this off stack overflow (link)

import arcpy,json
mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument("CURRENT")
for lyr in arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd):
    print json.dumps(lyr.name, ensure_ascii=False)

[StefanHaglund1]

Thank's Ben,

That was easy enough!