Otherwise, when dumped as a plain scalar, it's the special "default" key:
use YAML;
use Data::Dumper;
my $hashref = {"=" => "bar"};
my $yaml = Dump $hashref;
say $yaml;
my $load = Load $yaml;
say Dumper $load;
__END__
---
=: bar
$VAR1 = {
'YAMLVALUE' => 'bar'
};
Otherwise, when dumped as a plain scalar, it's the special "default" key: