Deuglification, then:

use strict;
open FH, "foo" or die "Can't open: $!";
my @recs;
foreach my $line (<FH>) {
    chomp $line;
    push @recs, [ split /,?\s/, $line ];
}
close FH or die "Can't close: $!";

open FH, ">foo.new" or die "Can't open: $!";
foreach my $line_ref (@recs) {
    my $line = join '|', @$line_ref[0 .. 4];
    print FH $line, "\n";
}
close FH;
[download]

Note that this is also untested. I maintain that a proper use of split is better than an apple a day.

Interesting bits for the Original Poster:

• We push an array reference onto @recs
• split can take an arbitrarily complex regex, instead of just a single character. Use it liberally!
• We use an array slice to get at only the first few fields we want.

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