Recursive unrar of several folders

Question

I have several RAR archives spread around multiple directories but all under a particular root folder on my Debian based NAS. Could someone help me write a simple script that would recursively go into each folder, unrar the contents, go back to the parent folder and move onto the next directory? So:

cd Photos/Summer/Italy/
unrar e Italy.rar
wait
cd ../France/
unrar e France.rar
wait
etc...

So just point it to root folder "Photos" and it blitzes through it unraring everything on the way...

Eg, directory structure:

*Photos:
 -Summer
  --Italy
   ---Italy.rar
   ---Italy.r01
   ---Italy.r02
  --France
   ---France.rar
   ---France.r01
   ---France.r02
 -Winter
  --Siberia
   ---Siberia.rar
   ---Siberia.r01
   ---Siberia.r02
  --Canada
   ---Snow.rar
   ---Snow.r01
   ---Snow.r02

score 28 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 11 '12 at 00:09

28

find Photos/ -name '*.rar' -execdir unrar e {} \;

answered Apr 11 '12 at 00:09

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

111,361
10
201
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Brilliant, didn't know it was so easy! Thank you very much! – Touff Apr 16 '12 at 23:17

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 29 '15 at 04:13

6

If you want to move the unrar'd photos to another destination, just enter the destination in the end, like this:

find source_dir/ -name '*.rar' -execdir unrar e -o- {} /new/destination_dir/ \;

edited Mar 29 '15 at 04:13

phindmarsh

103
2

answered May 14 '13 at 17:56

Dennis

61
1
2

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 02 '16 at 16:52

5

unrar has built-in recursion using the -r Recurse subdirectories switch.

unrar x -r <parent directory> Extracts contents of all subdirectories under <parent directory> into each subdirectory, keeping any directory structure that exists in the .rar files. Use e instead of x if directory structure is unwanted.

answered Apr 02 '16 at 16:52

hmj6jmh

519
2
6
10

1

This will extract the files from the subdirectory archives into ``. It won't place the extracted files into the subdirectory next to the `.rar` files. So it depends on what outcome is desired. The OP wasn't specific in this case. Sometimes your answer is useful to me but other times I need the `find` answer. – Cliff Aug 09 '19 at 00:05
Didn't work on my Raspberry Pi. Used find instead. – Bengt Aug 27 '20 at 22:55

Recursive unrar of several folders

3 Answers3