open LESS, '|less -cSRM' or die $!;

my @results = split(/dbDelimeter/,`SQL_Query`);

while(@results) {
    (var1,var2,var3,etc) = splice(@results, 0, 28);
    $var1 =~ s/\n//g;
    $var2 =~ s/oldDateFormat/newDateFormat/;
    $var3 =~ s/moreReplacements/DoneHere/;
    print LESS sprintf (%-10s %-10s %10s,$var1,$var2,$var3);
}

close LESS;

##</code><code>##

open my $query_fh, '-|', 'SQL_Query' or die $!;
open my $less_fh, '|-', 'less -cSRM' or die $!;

while (<$query_fh>) {
   ...
   print $less_fh sprintf (%-10s %-10s %10s,$var1,$var2,$var3);
}

close $less_fh;