I came across this simple script on ubuntuforums which I thought was really very useful and worth sharing it on my blog. You can either make a function out of it and put it in .bashrc file or make an executable script and put it in /usr/bin/.

Method 1:

Open your ~/.bashrc file using any editor.

gedit ~/.bashrc

Copy and paste the following code at the end of it:

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extract-file () {
if [ -f $1 ] ; then
case $1 in
*.tar.bz2) tar xjvf $1 ;;
*.tar.gz) tar xzvf $1 ;;
*.bz2) bunzip2 $1 ;;
*.rar) rar x $1 ;;
*.gz) gunzip $1 ;;
*.tar) tar xf $1 ;;
*.tbz2) tar xjvf $1 ;;
*.tgz) tar xzvf $1 ;;
*.zip) unzip $1 ;;
*.Z) uncompress $1 ;;
*.7z) 7z x $1 ;;
*) echo "'$1' cannot be extracted via extract-file" ;;
esac
else
echo "'$1' is not a valid file"
fi
}

Now you can use the following command to extract any archive:

extract-file

The command extract-file would be available only to terminals which have been opened after saving the .bashrc file with the above code. Also this code is user-specific, so if another user logs in he cannot use this command.

Method 2:

Use the following command to create a new file in /usr/bin directory and launch the gedit.

sudo gedit /usr/bin/extract-file

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