Python 2.7 literal_eval() with a UTF-8 string - python-3.x

Question

I'm updating an older application for Python 3, but trying to maintain compatibility if possible with Python 2.7. One of the issues I've encountered deals with inconsistencies in ast.literal_eval() between Python 2 & 3, when handling a UTF-8 string.
Specifically, one of the functions my application performs involves:
Reading a string from a UTF-8 encoded text file that represents a Python list of file names
Converting that UTF-8 string to a Python list via literal_eval()
Using that list to access those files and perform other processing.
My test .txt file has this string:
['FileName1.txt', 'CP1252-1-àlacrème.txt', 'dUTF8-1-木兰辞.txt']
I'm using this brief test script to emulate what the larger application does:
import io
from ast import literal_eval
with io.open('z.txt','r',encoding='utf_8') as inFile:
inStr = inFile.read()
print('Input string is length '+str(len(inStr)))
fileList = literal_eval(inStr)
print(fileList)
Now, when I run this test script on Python 3, I get the following (all OK and as expected) result:
Input string is length 61
['FileName1.txt', 'CP1252-1-àlacrème.txt','dUTF8-1-???.txt']
(The question marks are expected as this is a Windows CMD window; it doesn't handle non-latin-1 characters)
But anyway, when I run the same script with the same file on Python 2.7, I get this result:
Input string is length 61
['FileName1.txt', 'CP1252-1-\xc3\xa0lacr\xc3\xa8me.txt', 'dUTF8-1-\xe6\x9c\xa8\xe5\x85\xb0\xe8\xbe\x9e.txt']
So literal_eval() isn't maintaining the UTF-8 encoding in the resulting list. (Or, I guess, it's trying to maintain the encoding but the best it can do is represent the non-ASCII data as individual byte values.)
My question is: is there any way to make the Python 2 literal_eval() give the same result as the Python 3 version? Or am I stuck with this as a limitation?

Answer 1

As mentioned in comments, ast.literal_eval of the input parses differently between Python 2 and 3. Better to not write Python source as a data file, but use a module like pandas with .csv files:
If the input is a UTF-8 file with content:
FileName1.txt,CP1252-1-àlacrème.txt,dUTF8-1-木兰辞.txt
Then pandas can read it with:
import pandas as pd
data = pd.read_csv('test.txt',encoding='utf8',header=None)
print(data)
Output (Windows terminal Python 3, need appropriate font):
0 1 2
0 FileName1.txt CP1252-1-àlacrème.txt dUTF8-1-木兰辞.txt
Output (Windows IDLE, Python 2 in console needs appropriate code page to view ideographs):
0 1 2
0 FileName1.txt CP1252-1-àlacrème.txt dUTF8-1-木兰辞.txt