Ultimate Guide to Extracting RAR Archives in Linux

Discover the power of the unrar command in Linux with this comprehensive guide. Learn how to list all folders/files in RAR archives, extract files matching specific patterns, uninstall UnRAR, extract multiple RAR files at once, test archive files, retrieve comprehensive information about RAR files, and much more.

List all folders/files in rar archives that match "Passwords.txt" and print to stdout

find /path -name "*.rar" -print0 | xargs -0 -P100 -I{} unrar p -inul "{}" "*sswords*"

Extract files matching the pattern looo from the RAR archive archive.rar to the specified path

unrar e -or archive.rar *looo* passwords/

Delete all files except RAR files inside the current directory

find . -type f ! -name "*.rar" -exec rm {} +

Uninstall `UnRAR`

sudo apt-get remove unrar

Extract RAR archive

unrar x foo.rar

Extract `25` RAR archive files at once

find . -maxdepth 1 -name '*.rar' -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} -P 25 unrar x {}

List all JPG files inside archive.rar without extracting

List by extension

unrar lb archive.rar *.jpg

Extract a specific file from archive.rar

unrar e archive.rar */foo.txt

unrar e archive.rar *foo.txt

unrar e archive.rar foo.txt*

Find folders starting with a character

unrar -lb archive.rar | grep ^[A-Z]

Read files on the fly

unrar p archive.rar */foo.txt*

Extract the archive inside the current directory

unrar e -y archive.rar

Extract the archive and its folder layout

unrar x archive.rar

Extract all files and convert files and folders to lowercase

unrar e -cl archive.rar

Extract all files and convert files and folders to uppercase

unrar e -cu archive.rar

Specify the character set as UTF-8

unrar x -scUTF-8 archive.rar

Add files or paths to an existing RAR file

unrar -u archive.rar file1.txt directory/

Test archive files

unrar t archive.rar

Extract to a destination path

unrar x archive.rar destination_path

Freshen (update) any files in the destination directory that are older or missing

unrar f archive.rar

Read additional filter masks from stdin and list all Passwords.txt from archive.rar

unrar lb archive.rar -r n@ Passwords.txt

Read additional filter masks from wordlist.txt and list them

unrar lb archive.rar -r n@wordlist.txt

Read additional filter masks from stdin and extract all Passwords.txt from archive.rar

unrar x archive.rar -r n@ Passwords.txt

Read additional filter masks from stdin and extract all files matching the filter masks

unrar x archive.rar -r n@wordlist.txt

Read output on the fly

unrar p archive.rar | less

Retrieve comprehensive information about the files within a RAR archive

unrar l -slt archive.rar

Diff two RAR files

diff -y <(unrar lb archive.rar) <(unrar lb archive2.rar) | head -n50

Diff two archives and dump matched files only

diff -y <(unrar lb archive.rar) <(unrar lb archive2.rar) | grep "|"

List directories up to a maximum depth of 2 using awk

unrar l archive.rar | awk 'BEGIN {FS="/" } !NF || NF<=3'

Verbosely list archive contents

AllBareTechnical

unrar e -va archive.rar

unrar e -vb archive.rar

unrar e -vt archive.rar

Rename all duplicate files to avoid overwriting

#!/bin/bash
# Author: wuseman
#
# Description:
#
# This script helps ensure that duplicate files extracted from the RAR archive are not overwritten. 
# It uses a loop to extract the log.txt file, perform modifications, and rename the file with a 
# counter to create unique filenames for each extraction. The loop continues until there are no 
# more files matching the criteria. This prevents any extracted files from being overwritten and 
# allows you to retain all versions of the extracted files.
#
counter=1

while unrar e -or archive.rar '*/log.txt' $dir/ |
        grep -i log.txt |
        sed '
          s/OK/[OK]/;
          s:.*/::;
          s/log.txt/logs.txt/g'
do
  mv logs.txt "logs($counter).txt"
  ((counter++))
done

Parallel extraction of RAR files

In this script, we define a function extract_rar that takes two arguments: the RAR file to extract and the destination directory. The unrar command is used to extract the RAR file in the background by appending & to the command.

We then call the extract_rar function for each RAR file you want to extract, providing the appropriate file and destination arguments. Replace "file1.rar", "/path/to/destination1", "file2.rar", and "/path/to/destination2" with your actual RAR file names and destination directories.

The wait command is used to ensure that the script waits for all the background processes to finish before exiting.

This script allows the two RAR files to be extracted in parallel, maximizing efficiency by utilizing multiple processes.

#!/bin/bash
# Author: wuseman
#
# Description: This script demonstrates how to extract two RAR files in parallel.

# Function to extract RAR file in the background
extract_rar() {
    unrar x "$1" "$2" &   # Extract the RAR file in the background
}

# Call the function for each RAR file
extract_rar "file1.rar" "/path/to/destination1"   # Replace "file1.rar" and "/path/to/destination1" with your desired values
extract_rar "file2.rar" "/path/to/destination2"   # Replace "file2.rar" and "/path/to/destination2" with your desired values

# Wait for all background processes to finish
wait   # Wait for all the extraction processes to complete