note zwon <blockquote>I should see UTF8 values ... YAML::Syck does this</blockquote> I don't see this from your example. [mod://YAML::Syck] returns you two latin1 characters instead of a single <c>\x{103}</c> that the file contains, which is exactly the opposite to what you are saying you want. [mod://YAML::XS] expects UTF-8 octets on input, and it checks that it is correct UTF-8, and it returns you UTF-8 characters. I have impression that you don't realise what you are getting from the modules, maybe you should use <c>Dump</c> from the [mod://Devel::Peek] to inspect values instead of <c>Dumper</c>, also if you add <c> use open ":utf8"; use open ":std"; </c> to your script, it will be clear to you, that [mod://YAML::Syck] doesn't return ă, but ă. 979143 979164