use strict;
use warnings;
use YAML qw();

my $test = {regex => qr/\w+\W+(\w+)/, str => "this is a string"};
my $yamlStr = YAML::Dump($test);

print "YAML: $yamlStr\n";

my $andBack = YAML::Load ($yamlStr);
my ($secondWord) = $andBack->{str} =~ $andBack->{regex};

print "Second word is: $secondWord\n";