Unzip or Unrar Many Files at Once in Linux
If you've got a directory with dozens of zipped or rar'd files, you can run a single command to unzip them all in one step, thanks to the power of the bash shell.
For this task, we'll use bash's for loop command structure. Replace <var> with a variable name, and <list> with either a command that outputs a list or an explicit list.
for <var> in <list>
do
command $<var>;
done
You can run it on a single line with this syntax instead:
for <var> in <list>;do command $<var>;done
So if you want to unrar a list of files, you could use this command. You don't necessarily need the quotes, but it helps when the filenames have spaces or something like that in them.
for f in *.rar;do unrar e "$f";done
If you wanted to use 7zip to extract a list of files:
for f in *.001;do 7z e "$f";done
Or if you wanted to unzip a list of files:
for f in *.zip;do unzip "$f";done
You could even chain commands together if you wanted to. For instance, if all your zip files contained .txt files and you wanted to unzip them and then move the unzipped files to another directory:
for f in *.zip;do unzip "$f";done; for f in *.txt;do mv "$f" /myfolder/;done
The bash shell is just so incredibly powerful… this doesn't even tap the power, but it should give you a good idea of what is possible.


Actually, I'm pretty sure with both these commands you can just do this:
unzip *.zip
unzip *.rar
Seems a bit more straightforward.
That may work sometimes, but didn't work for me. (just tried it again to make sure)
The article is mostly illustrating how to use the for / do in bash =)
How would I go about 'rarring'
or zipping a bunch of folders?
Hi Jim. Photos i received. Thanks
Is there a decompressor that extracts almost all file types, if so which?
find -name *.zip -exec unzip {} \;
Try unzip \*.zip - It works in RED HAT flavours, I have not tried it on any other linux.
Why didn't i find this 3 days ago? The only matter is that the files aren't extracted in subdirectories. I made a similar script myself. Take a look: http://ubuntu.alperortac.de/20.....ubfolders/