split perl function will conveniently do like so:

use warnings;
use strict;
use Data::Printer;

my $str='0.740234|0.758789|0.748047|0.749023|0.748047|0.754883|0.74316
+4|0.748047|0.780273|0.739258|0.765625|0.761719|0.760742|||||0.75293|0
+.742188';

   my @str_data = split/\|/,$str;

  p @str_data;
[download]

[
  [0]  0.740234,
  [1]  0.758789,
  [2]  0.748047,
  [3]  0.749023,
  [4]  0.748047,
  [5]  0.754883,
  [6]  0.743164,
  [7]  0.748047,
  [8]  0.780273,
  [9]  0.739258,
  [10] 0.765625,
  [11] 0.761719,
  [12] 0.760742,
  [13] "",
  [14] "",
  [15] "",
  [16] "",
  [17] 0.75293,
  [18] 0.742188
]
[download]