[ruby-talk:00496] serialization of objects?

Hello,

I've noticed the Object.to_s method to get a string from an Object.
Is there a simple way to restore an entire object hierarchy from a
string?  For example, given a (non-cyclic) graph structure f,
(1) would the writer block

   file = open("f.out", "w")
   print file, "%s", f.to_s
   close(file)

get f and all its data, or just f?

(2) How would one implement a reader so the following works:

   file = open("f.out", "r")
   f.from_string_stream file
   close(file)

Thanks for your help and patience :)

Chiao, 
Michael