Bash substring from position not printing - linux

Question

I am using the following format #{string:start:length} to extract the file name from wget's .listing file, line by line.
The format for the file is something I think we are all familiar with:
04-30-13 01:41AM 7033614 some_archive.zip
04-29-13 08:13PM <DIR> DIRECTORY NAME 1
04-29-13 05:41PM <DIR> DIRECTORY NAME 2
All file names start at pos:40, so setting :start to 39, with no :length should (and does) return the file name for each line:
#!/bin/bash
cat .listing | while read line; do
file="${line:40}"
echo $file
done
Correctly returns:
some_archive.zip
DIRECTORY NAME 1
DIRECTORY NAME 2
However, if I get any more creative, it breaks:
#!/bin/bash
cat .listing | while read line; do
file="${line:40}"
dir=$(echo $line | egrep -o '<DIR>' | head -n1)
if [ $dir ]; then
echo "the file $file is a $dir"
fi
done
Returns:
$ ./test.sh
is a <DIR>ECTORY NAME 1
is a <DIR>ECTORY NAME 2
What gives? I lose "the file " and the rest of the test looks like it prints on top of "the file DIRECTORY NAME 1" from pos:0.
It's weird, what's it on account of?

Answer 1

The answer, as I am learning more and more with linux as I progress, is non-printing control characters.
Adding a pipe to egrep for only printing characters solved the problem:
#!/bin/bash
cat .listing | while read line; do
file=$(echo ${line:39} | egrep -o '[[:print:]]+' | head -n1)
dir=$(echo $line | egrep -o '<DIR>' | head -n1)
if [ $dir ]; then
echo "the file $file is a $dir"
fi
done
Correctly returns:
$ ./test.sh
the file DIRECTORY NAME 1 is a <DIR>
the file DIRECTORY NAME 2 is a <DIR>
Wish there were a better way to visualize these control characters, but what the above does is basically take the string segment, pull out the first string of printable characters, and assign it to the variable.
I assume there is a control character at the end of the line that returns the cursor to the beginning of the line. Causing the rest of the echo to be printed there, overwriting the previous characters.'
Odd.

Answer 2

You can remove the \r control characters from the whole file by using the tr command on the first line of your script:
#!/bin/bash
cat .listing | tr -d '\015' | while read line; do
file="${line:39}"
dir=$(echo $line | egrep -o '<DIR>' | head -n1)
if [ $dir ]; then
echo "the file $file is a $dir"
fi
done