Yep, and here's the benchmarks to prove it. (I just felt like learning the benchmark module.) 
use strict;
use warnings;
use Benchmark qw(:all);

#banging on the keyboard
my $target_string = 'al;nsdfj;oasmfdio;asdfoasdjfm;mioasfdsjdo;fijso;a
+dfjmio;sadjfmos;adfmjosia;mdfjiosad';

Benchmark::cmpthese ( 
        1000000,
        { 
         'substituteStar' => sub { $_ = $target_string;
                                       s/[abc]*//g; } ,
         'substituteNoStar' => sub { $_ = $target_string;
                                       s/[abc]//g;  } ,
         'substitutePlus' => sub { $_ = $target_string;
                                       s/[abc]+//g; } ,
         'trAbc' => sub { $_ = $target_string;
              tr/abc//d;  } 
        }
     )

[download]
Outputs: 
                     Rate substituteStar substituteNoStar substitutePl
+us   trAbc
substituteStar    29935/s             --             -85%           -8
+5%    -95%
substituteNoStar 195733/s           554%               --            -
+1%    -69%
substitutePlus   196928/s           558%               1%             
+--    -68%
trAbc            621504/s          1976%             218%           21
+6%      --

[download]

In reply to Re: Code Smarter by tphyahoo
in thread Code Smarter by japhy

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