Cx: A bash function for comfortable extraction of *.tar/*.tar.gz/*.tar.bz2 | Hacker News Reader

*.tar.bz2

scratchingmyownitch.com

18 pointserikano16 comments

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I use dtrx for this purpose (http://brettcsmith.org/2007/dtrx/).

It's worth mentioning that this is in the ubuntu (and debian?) repos. 'sudo apt-get install dtrx'

That looks really nice. I have something in my .$SHELLrc file that does something similar:

the extract_archive() in http://github.com/Rydgel/archlinux/blob/master/.zshrc

but yours looks like it takes care of other things like archives within archives.

Like many others, I've scratched this itch too: http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/code/hacks/untar a simple bash script. The comments in the source list debian/ubuntu packages to install to support all formats.

It detects and extracts .7z .a .ace .arj .cab .cpio .deb .lha .pmd .rar .rpm .tar{,.gz,.Z,.bz2,.xz} .tnef .zip (including .jar, .xpi etc) .zoo and MIME/uuencoded mail attachments without ever splattering multiple files over the current directory. Haven't compared to dtrx.

This is a petty cool idea.

Although you're supposed to already package things like this, I think everyone's been through the "oh damn, now there is 20 new files and directories, which is what" before.

GNU tar already automatically detects compression types.

tar -xf file

Will happily extract tar, tgz, tbz and more.

That's not the feature cx advertises.

You're right. I read the vague headline and assumed the obvious. This is a tar bomb prevention tool and looks useful.

cx is a common alias for chmod +x, so another name might be better.

I've never heard of that - how do you know it's common?

It's in UNIX Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike, chapter 3.

Also in Unix Power Tools by Powers, Peek, O'Reilly and Loukides, article 50.8 (3rd edition).

Thanks for the information.

This looks fantastic. I just need to add support for some more archive formats (.rar primarily) and this will fill a need thats been bugging me for a while.

I've scratched that itch as well a few years ago: http://porkrind.org/uz/uz

Egads, this is a problem that is still being solved?

I think the only reason for this is no one expected us to still be using FUCKING UNIX at this point in history.

(Seriously... Open does not mean Good, will the OSS community ever 'start fresh'?)

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