Automatic unzip/untar using correct tool

Contributed by Martin Fitzpatrick, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

An alias for bash profile to automatically unzip/untar compressed files using the correct tool, without needing to know the syntax.

• Add the following to your .bashrc or .profile file:

  extract () {

  if [ -f $1 ] ; then

  case $1 in

  *.tar.bz2) tar xjf $1 ;; *.tar.gz) tar xzf $1 ;; *.bz2) bunzip2 $1 ;; *.rar) rar x $1 ;; *.gz) gunzip $1 ;; *.tar) tar xf $1 ;; *.tbz2) tar xjf $1 ;; *.tgz) tar xzf $1 ;; *.zip) unzip $1 ;; *.Z) uncompress $1 ;; *) echo “’$1’ cannot be extracted via extract()” ;;

  esac

  else

  echo “’$1’ is not a valid file”

  fi }

• From the prompt compress any file with extract <filename>

This method is based, with permission, on an original protocol available here.