I can't see a difference between the two variations you posted! Also the [^chars]+[chars] was deliberate - when you define a character class, putting ^ inside negates it - so i meant 'match a string of non-special characters, followed by a special character'. i guess it could also be put as s/.*[\.\:\!\)\,]// i.e. match anything followed by a special character!

I understand your pain about overheads and memory usage though, so keep pushing and you'll get there eventually!