You want to know about the /g modifier. Read about it in perldoc perlre:

Update: on a second reading you probably want (code updated to reflect the change): 

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

while (my $line=<DATA>) {
    $line =~ s/\s+/|/ for 1..5;
    print $line;
}

__DATA__
This#    is      stand alone data        "but this data needs to , sta
+y together/
and here is some more   -but this is a single column

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In reply to Re: working with non-delimited files by blazar
in thread working with non-delimited files by semio

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