Concentrating on

basically i want to search and trim (0+ spaces);(0+chars) AFTER the last >

as the actual requirement:

substr( $line, rindex( $line, '>')) =~ s/\s*;\w*//;
# typo corrected, s/:/;/ in the regex
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That has a certain amount of magic in it that I should explain. The substr function is an lvalue, meaning that the string of its first argument is modifiable through it. The rindex function finds the last '>' in $line, making substr deal with only the portion of $line that follows that position. Effectively, the substitution is restricted to the part of $line that you specified.

After Compline,
Zaxo