All code below is untested

Update: suggestion about splitting is valid only if the result from database is "|"-separated, as cleverly pointed out here...

You had to say it immediately:

my @strings = split /\|/, $status;
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Note that, by default, putting @sorted_strings in double quotes will give you space-separated items. You can change the separator using the perlvar $":

{
   local $" = "|";
   print "<br><font color=red>@sorted_strings</font><br>";
}
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I put the curly brackets in order to restrict the modification of the $" variable, making this modification "visible" to the print statement only.

Anyway, I'd probably use a more flexible, metadata-based approach:

my %subst (
   P => 'Posted',
   F => 'Posted',
   C => 'Posted',
   D => 'Posted',
   I => 'Posted',
   A => 'Accepted',
   N => 'New',
   R => 'Rejected',
   S => 'Save',
   X => 'Canceled',
);

my @sorted_strings = sort map { $subst{$_} } split /\|/, $status;

# The above line can be roughly expanded to the three lines below:
#
# my @status_letters = split /\|/, $status;
# my @strings;
# foreach (@status_letters) {
#    push @strings, $subst{$_}
# }
# my @sorted_strings = sort @strings;
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