readline the file into a map, chomp the line terminator, split on pipes, grep for length to remove empty fields and pass to a second map as an anonymous array which you join with pipes again.

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '
open my $inFH, q{<}, \ <<EOF or die $!;
IFB Northpole||| Alaska||| 907-555-5555
Walmart||| Fairbanks||| Alaska
Chicken||| Anchorage||| Alaska||| 907-555-5555
Beef||| Somewhere|||||Over the Rainbow|||907-555-5555 
EOF

say for
   map { join q{|}, @$_ }
   map { chomp; [ grep { length } split m{\|} ] }
   <$inFH>;'
IFB Northpole| Alaska| 907-555-5555
Walmart| Fairbanks| Alaska
Chicken| Anchorage| Alaska| 907-555-5555
Beef| Somewhere|Over the Rainbow|907-555-5555 
$

[download]

I hope this is helpful.

Cheers,

JohnGG

In reply to Re: how to remove empty pipe delimiters in a line which doesn't contain any data by johngg
in thread how to remove empty pipe delimiters in a line which doesn't contain any data by rpinnam

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