## Substitute 2 or more horizontal white space with pipe
		s/[\h+]{2,}/|/g;

##</code><code>##

#!/usr/bin/perl
local $/;
open my $fh, '<', 'whitespacegone.txt' or die $!;
my $txt = <$fh>;

$txt =~ s/(\n\|)/ /mg;

for ( split '\n', $txt ) {
    # process each line
}
print $txt;