diff --git a/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/core/Configuration.java b/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/core/Configuration.java
index 1b6139207..1c8294666 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/core/Configuration.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/core/Configuration.java
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ public final class Configuration {
      * Automatically populated by Gradle/Maven during build.
      * DO NOT EDIT MANUALLY - this value is replaced at build time.
      */
-    public static final String gitCommitId = "b037509d0";
+    public static final String gitCommitId = "4aafb6057";
 
     /**
      * Git commit date of the build (ISO format: YYYY-MM-DD).
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/frontend/parser/ParseHeredoc.java b/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/frontend/parser/ParseHeredoc.java
index c66b04e5f..972bf6ed4 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/frontend/parser/ParseHeredoc.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/frontend/parser/ParseHeredoc.java
@@ -10,10 +10,12 @@
 import org.perlonjava.frontend.lexer.LexerTokenType;
 import org.perlonjava.runtime.runtimetypes.PerlCompilerException;
 
+import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.List;
 
 import static org.perlonjava.frontend.parser.StringParser.parseRawString;
+import static org.perlonjava.runtime.perlmodule.Strict.HINT_UTF8;
 
 public class ParseHeredoc {
     static OperatorNode parseHeredoc(Parser parser, String tokenText) {
@@ -212,6 +214,16 @@ else if (currentIndex >= tokens.size() ||
             String string = content.toString();
             if (CompilerOptions.DEBUG_ENABLED) parser.ctx.logDebug("Final heredoc content: <<" + string + ">>");
 
+            // Without `use utf8`, convert Unicode chars back to UTF-8 byte values,
+            // matching Perl 5's treatment of source bytes as Latin-1/octets.
+            // Skip if source is already ISO-8859-1 (isByteStringSource) — chars already
+            // represent raw byte values and need no conversion.
+            if (!parser.ctx.symbolTable.isStrictOptionEnabled(HINT_UTF8)
+                    && !parser.ctx.compilerOptions.isUnicodeSource
+                    && !parser.ctx.compilerOptions.isByteStringSource) {
+                string = convertToOctets(string);
+            }
+
             // Rewrite the heredoc node, according to the delimiter
             Node operand = null;
             switch (delimiter) {
@@ -293,4 +305,19 @@ public static void restoreHeredocStateIfNeeded(Parser parser, List<OperatorNode>
             parser.getHeredocNodes().addAll(savedHeredocNodes);
         }
     }
+
+    /**
+     * Convert a Unicode string back to UTF-8 byte values.
+     * Without `use utf8`, Perl treats source bytes as Latin-1/octets.
+     * Since Java reads source files as UTF-8 and decodes multi-byte sequences
+     * into single characters, we need to reverse this for Perl compatibility.
+     */
+    private static String convertToOctets(String str) {
+        byte[] utf8Bytes = str.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
+        StringBuilder octetString = new StringBuilder(utf8Bytes.length);
+        for (byte b : utf8Bytes) {
+            octetString.append((char) (b & 0xFF));
+        }
+        return octetString.toString();
+    }
 }
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/frontend/parser/Variable.java b/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/frontend/parser/Variable.java
index 971b0c0f1..afe97e754 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/frontend/parser/Variable.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/frontend/parser/Variable.java
@@ -925,8 +925,9 @@ public static Node parseBracedVariable(Parser parser, String sigil, boolean isSt
                     if (TokenUtils.peek(parser).text.equals("}")) {
                         TokenUtils.consume(parser, LexerTokenType.OPERATOR, "}");
 
-                        // Issue ambiguity warning if needed
-                        if (isAmbiguous) {
+                        // Issue ambiguity warning if needed (not inside string interpolation,
+                        // matching Perl 5 which only warns in code context)
+                        if (isAmbiguous && !isStringInterpolation) {
                             String accessType = "";
                             if (operand instanceof BinaryOperatorNode binOp) {
                                 if (binOp.operator.equals("[")) {
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/runtime/perlmodule/Utf8.java b/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/runtime/perlmodule/Utf8.java
index 1f96ff5a1..1faa7423a 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/runtime/perlmodule/Utf8.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/perlonjava/runtime/perlmodule/Utf8.java
@@ -349,27 +349,10 @@ public static RuntimeList valid(RuntimeArray args, int ctx) {
         String string = scalar.toString();
 
         if (scalar.type == BYTE_STRING) {
-            // For byte strings, check if the bytes form valid UTF-8
-            // Extract raw byte values and try to decode as UTF-8
-            byte[] bytes = new byte[string.length()];
-            for (int i = 0; i < string.length(); i++) {
-                char c = string.charAt(i);
-                if (c > 0xFF) {
-                    // Byte string should not contain chars > 0xFF
-                    // This is an inconsistent state
-                    return RuntimeScalarCache.scalarFalse.getList();
-                }
-                bytes[i] = (byte) c;
-            }
-            CharsetDecoder decoder = StandardCharsets.UTF_8.newDecoder()
-                    .onMalformedInput(CodingErrorAction.REPORT)
-                    .onUnmappableCharacter(CodingErrorAction.REPORT);
-            try {
-                decoder.decode(ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes));
-                return RuntimeScalarCache.scalarTrue.getList();
-            } catch (CharacterCodingException e) {
-                return RuntimeScalarCache.scalarFalse.getList();
-            }
+            // For byte strings (UTF-8 flag off), Perl always returns true.
+            // The bytes are not claiming to be UTF-8, so they are considered
+            // valid in their native encoding (Latin-1/bytes).
+            return RuntimeScalarCache.scalarTrue.getList();
         } else {
             // For character strings (UTF-8 flag on), check if all characters are valid
             // Unicode code points. Java strings contain UTF-16 code units, which