In a word, no.

Reversing the regex is much faster.
Have a look at these benchmarks: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Benchmark;

my $string = "<<HTML>;nbsp dont_strip_me</HTML>> <xyzfdgfghgf> ;strip_
+me";

sub reversed {
  my $reverse = reverse(shift);
  $reverse =~ s| \w* ; \s* > |>|x;
  return scalar reverse $reverse;
}

sub greedy {
  my $line = shift;
  $line =~ s|^ (.*>) \s* ; \w* |$1|x;
  return $line;
}

print "Reversed: ", reversed($string), "\n";
print "Greedy: ", greedy($string), "\n";

timethese( -10,{
                reversed => sub { reversed( $string ) },
                greedy => sub { greedy( $string ) },
               } );

[download]

Output:

Reversed: <<HTML>;nbsp dont_strip_me</HTML>> <xyzfdgfghgf>
Greedy: <<HTML>;nbsp dont_strip_me</HTML>> <xyzfdgfghgf>
Benchmark: running greedy, reversed, each for at least 10 CPU seconds...
    greedy: 10 wallclock secs ( 9.98 usr + 0.02 sys = 10.00 CPU) @ 78480.80/s (n=784808)
  reversed: 11 wallclock secs (10.46 usr + 0.00 sys = 10.46 CPU) @ 167660.04/s (n=1753724)

As you can see, it's over twice the speed. On longer strings, the difference would be even greater.

Also, your regex is wrong. Read through perldoc:perlre (specifically, the section marked 'Warning on \1 vs $1') to discover why.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: parsing question by kilinrax
in thread parsing question by Washie101

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.