Another way to do it is to repeat the substitution until it fails; this may be less efficient but it often conserves brain time: 
while (s/\|\|/|empty|/g) {};

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or the semi-golf version 
1 while s/\|\|/|empty|/g;

[download]

In reply to Re: pipe delimited file problem by quester
in thread pipe delimited file problem by lakeTrout

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