I cannot answer the why in that question, but the only place where *I* use it on a very regular basis is

my @foo = map  { $_->[0]             }
          sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] }
          map  { m/^(.*(\d+).*)$/    }
          @bar;
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Which works evenly fine when semi-colons are added.

Following the complete discussion, I wonder why you persist. To me it is obvious that Perl is not (or should not be) your language of choice.

If you really think trailing semi-colons should be omitted, do find a language that allows it. You have come up with exactly ZERO arguments that will convince the other users of perl and perl language designers and language maintainers.

To me however, all the counter-arguments were very insightful, so thank you for starting it anyway.

/me wonders how many users would stop using perl completely if your rules would be implemented (wild guess 90%) and how many new users the language would gain (wild guess 1%)

can you please explain why Perl designers took some efforts to allow omitting semicolon before closing brace? >

Because it's unambiguous, and because it allows one to treat it as a statement separator (like the comma) instead of statement terminator.

Getting rid of the others would cause countless ambiguities.