How about this: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use strict;

my $txt = "  apple    bannana   lemon  ";
print "Before: '$txt'\n";

$txt =~ s/(^\s+)|(\s+$)//g;    # remove leading and trailing spaces;
$txt =~ s/\s+/\|/g;            # collapse multiple spaces into a singl
+e '|'

print "After:  '$txt'\n";

=output
Before: '  apple    bannana   lemon  '
After:  'apple|bannana|lemon'

[download]

-Blake

In reply to Re: Reaplcing double spaces by blakem
in thread Replacing double spaces (was: Reaplcing double spaces) by DaWolf

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