It looks like a substituion regular expression might be what you need. (you look like you want to substitute "<*40>" for "").

$line =~ s/\<\*40\>//g;
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The "s" before the regexp is for substitue, and the "g" tells it to apply to the statement more than just once. That might be simpler than finding, removing, splitting, and joining. Nothing is a valid substitution candidate.

Update: There is a tutorial at String matching and Regular Expressions that discusses s/// and the intricacies therein.

    --jb