split works best when you have a list joined by a seperator, and you split on the seperator.

sub unbracket {
   for (my $s = @_ ? $_[0] : $_) {
      s/^<//;
      s/>$//;
      return $_;
   }
}

my %hash = map unbracket, map { split /=/ } split /, /, $_;

# Or just
# my %hash = map unbracket, split /, |=/, $_;
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