Filtering terminal commands on linux

[Adriaan Renting]

I have the problem that I need to interact with a CD/DVD burning program
called gear. I do this by running it in a pseudo terminal.

I also need to log what I'm doing, so I copy all output I get from gear
to a logfile. The problem is that gear uses terminal control commands to
create a nice commandline interface.
I can filter out all non printable characters to get something I can put
in my logfile, but this leaves a lot of the terminal control commands.
My problem is that the control sequences are variable in length, and
themselves printable text. they probably vary depending on the $TERM
setting too. Does anyone have code that can parse this, so I can get rid
of the ugly control sequences?

Any suggestions on how to do this with regular expressions is welcome
too, with my limited knowledge I don't know how to do it. Finding the
beginning is kind of easy, as it always starts with <unprinteable
control character>[, but the length varies after that.

My output now looks like this:
2005-07-28 14:27:58     Message : [76C^M Scanning busses for recorder
devices...please wait...
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : [K[77C^M Driver found: Linux Scsi
Generic v3 Driver.
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : [76C^M PLEXTOR  DVDR   PX-716A  
revision 1.07 found on /dev/sg1
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message :
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : [76C^M [23;54H[25DPLEXTOR DVDR  
PX-716A [11;78H^M Recorder PLEXTOR DVDR   PX-716A used.
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message :
[9B[K[79C[6DReady^M[K[79C[18DInitializing tape^M[K[79C [25DInitializing
tape driver[12;78H^M Selected tape interface: Standard SCSI driver
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : [76C^M Scanning bus for tape
units...please wait...^M [K[77C^M Driver found: Linux Scsi Generic v3
Driver.
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : [76C^M HP[7CC5683A[11Crevision C908
found on /dev/sg0

I would like:
2005-07-28 14:27:58     Message : Scanning busses for recorder
devices...please wait...
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : Driver found: Linux Scsi Generic v3
Driver.
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : PLEXTOR  DVDR   PX-716A   revision
1.07 found on /dev/sg1
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message :
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : PLEXTOR DVDR   PX-716A Recorder
PLEXTOR DVDR   PX-716A used.
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : Ready Initializing tape Initializing
tape driver Selected tape interface: Standard SCSI driver
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : Scanning bus for tape units...please
wait... Driver found: Linux Scsi Generic v3 Driver.
2005-07-28 14:27:59     Message : HP 5683A revision 08 found on /dev/sg0

Thank you.