Yep, this won't work if the file format is defined to have whitespace-seperated columns.

However, if you change the definition, it woll work. For example you define the columns by starting-position and width.

my @columns = (
      [ 0 , 9 ], # position,width
      [ 13, 14],
      # ...
);
while( <$the_file> ){
   chomp;
   my @data = ();
   for my $spec ( @columns ){
      push @data , substr($_,@$spec)
   }
   print join('|',@data),"\n";
}
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Programming is a question of definition

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