It sounds like you know the column widths, and looks like the first column will be all whitespace unless you are starting a new record.

while (my $textline=<DATAFILE>)
{
   if ( substr($textline,0,9) =~ /\S/)
   {
       #New record detected - Print out old one, and prep for new
       printf ("%s%s%s%s\n",$nodename,
                       $filename, $backupdate, $pathname);
       $nodename = substr($textline, 0, 9);
       $filename = '';
       $pathname = '';
       $backupdate = '';
   }
   
   $filename .= substr($textline, 10,19);
   $pathname .= substr($textline, 20,29);
   $backupdate .= substr($textline, 30); 
}
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