A look at perlrun would probably enrich your day, but meanwhile (and I wonder how many people will have posted this while I type this sentence...) I believe (unless I'm missing something) that the effect you're looking for can be achieved with this:

perl -pe 'tr/}//d' memgrp.dat >> new_mem_grp.dat
[download]

or for extra jollies, just alter the original file in place (saving a backup, of course):

perl -pe 'tr/}//d' -i.bak memgrp.dat
[download]

So in short, the answer to your question is "yes". :-)