Dunno about 'cleaner' (everyone has their own understanding of that term) but certainly more succinct:

my $memory_data = 'foo=bar;zub=baz;yar=grr';
                                                                      
+          
my %data;
                                                                      
+          
$data{$1} = $2 while $memory_data =~ /([^=;]+)=([^;]+)/g;
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/J\