How to unrar lots of rars.
January 29, 2012 9:35 AM Subscribe
So, I have a whole folder of .rar files. I would like to de-archive all of them, but can't seem to find a way besides clicking them one at a time. I am running Ubuntu, and the only program I've tried so far is the default archive utility program. I haven't been able to find a solution by googling, but maybe my keywords are off. Help me save hours of repetitive clicking!
Install the unrar package, then do it from the command line.
posted by scruss at 9:40 AM on January 29, 2012
posted by scruss at 9:40 AM on January 29, 2012
Response by poster: I should mention I'm very new to Ubuntu. Could you possible give me a play by play on the command line thing?
posted by klugarsh at 9:45 AM on January 29, 2012
posted by klugarsh at 9:45 AM on January 29, 2012
Best answer: If you want to do everything under the current directory in a oner:
find . -type f -iname '*.rar' -exec unrar x -ad {} \;
That will extract them all, preserving folder structure, and putting the contents of each in a folder with the same name as the parent rar file.
posted by scruss at 9:47 AM on January 29, 2012 [2 favorites]
find . -type f -iname '*.rar' -exec unrar x -ad {} \;
That will extract them all, preserving folder structure, and putting the contents of each in a folder with the same name as the parent rar file.
posted by scruss at 9:47 AM on January 29, 2012 [2 favorites]
Once you install unrar, it might be slightly more complicated than "unrar *.rar". According the unrar man page, the program only takes on rar file at a time, so you'll have to unpack everything in a loop. Consider:
posted by ayerarcturus at 9:48 AM on January 29, 2012
sudo apt-get install unrar-free
for rarfile in `ls *.rar`; do unrar x $rarfile; done
posted by ayerarcturus at 9:48 AM on January 29, 2012
Note that ayerarcturus's solution won't work if any of the files have spaces in the names.
posted by scruss at 9:50 AM on January 29, 2012
posted by scruss at 9:50 AM on January 29, 2012
ayerarcturus: the ls isn't required there, btw, you can just do:
for rarfile in *.rar; do unrar x $rarfile; done
posted by jaymzjulian at 10:06 AM on January 29, 2012
for rarfile in *.rar; do unrar x $rarfile; done
posted by jaymzjulian at 10:06 AM on January 29, 2012
Best answer: Rarzombie is java based and might work for you.
posted by PSB at 10:07 AM on January 29, 2012
posted by PSB at 10:07 AM on January 29, 2012
Also, because i forgot to preview: you _really" want to write it as:
for rarfile in *.rar; do unrar x "$rarfile"; done
with the quotation marks, or else you'll end up in teh sitaution where a file with spaces or other weird characters will break everything. Or, use the find version above, which takes care of that (which is what my unrar script i use here does)
#!/bin/bash
shopt -s extglob
find !(day*) -mindepth 1 -name '*.rar' -execdir 'rar' '-o-' 'x' '{}' ';'
(the day* thing is to ignore the links created by another script which puts files in folders based on how long ago they were downloaded)
posted by jaymzjulian at 10:08 AM on January 29, 2012
for rarfile in *.rar; do unrar x "$rarfile"; done
with the quotation marks, or else you'll end up in teh sitaution where a file with spaces or other weird characters will break everything. Or, use the find version above, which takes care of that (which is what my unrar script i use here does)
#!/bin/bash
shopt -s extglob
find !(day*) -mindepth 1 -name '*.rar' -execdir 'rar' '-o-' 'x' '{}' ';'
(the day* thing is to ignore the links created by another script which puts files in folders based on how long ago they were downloaded)
posted by jaymzjulian at 10:08 AM on January 29, 2012
Response by poster: Thanks all! That script worked well and the rarzombie program looks promising for next time as well.
posted by klugarsh at 10:13 AM on January 29, 2012
posted by klugarsh at 10:13 AM on January 29, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by kellyblah at 9:39 AM on January 29, 2012