or you could use $str =~ s/\b \b//g;

...only if all the *non-space* characters are *word* characters:

my $str = '@@@@ $$$ *** )))';
$str =~ s/\b \b//g;
print $str;

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In reply to Re^3: Regular Expressions: Removing 'only' single spaces from a string by Not_a_Number
in thread Regular Expressions: Removing 'only' single spaces from a string by BioBoy

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