Using find to recursively unrar all files in subfolders

Sometimes when I've downloaded something, it is compressed into several small rar files, divided into lots of subfolders. This can be handy to keep track of files, but at the same time a pain in the ass when uncompressing them. You simply have to go into each subfolder and either run:

$ unrar x *01.rar

or using a gui-tool to unrar/unzip them. A little trick to make this a lot faster is to simply use the "find" command to find all the files you need, and then send them into whatever program you need to decompress them. You can use the same command to pipe files into playlists or even to compress files into several folders.

Now in this example we have a folder structure like the following:

$ ls -l
totalt 2,3G
foo.bar.v1.12.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.13.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.14.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.15.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.16.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.17.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.18.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.19.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.20.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.21.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.22.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.23.sourcecode/
foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/

First we start with the find command.

$ find ./software-foo*/

This will list all files in the folders. Each subdirectory in its turn contains:

$ ls -l
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part02.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part03.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part04.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part05.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part06.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part07.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part08.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part09.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part10.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part11.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part12.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part13.rar

To unrar, we need to define the first file (or any really, but just one) in each subdirectory. To show just the files we add the "-type f" flag. To then be able to parse the list, we also add a check for filenames. This is done with the "-name" flag.

$ find ./software-foo*/ -type f -name '*01.rar'

This gives us a list of the filenames that match the pattern *01.rar.

$ find ./software-foo*/ -type f -name '*01.rar'
./foo.bar.v1.12.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.12.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.13.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.13.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.14.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.14.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.15.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.15.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.16.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.16.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.17.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.17.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.18.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.18.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.19.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.19.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.20.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.20.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.21.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.21.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.22.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.22.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.23.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.23.sourcecode.part01.rar
./foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode/foo.bar.v1.24.sourcecode.part01.rar

So here is our list of files that we want to unrar. We then add the flag "-exec" to perform a command on the given files. The command we want is "unrar x", and then we also need to add some extra syntax to give the command its parameters.

$ find ./software-foo*/ -type f -name '*01.rar' -exec unrar x {} \;

Now we just wait! This decompresses all the files in all the subdirectories into the current directory. Perhaps not the best thing if it's hundreds of sourcefiles, so we have one more trick. Instead of using the "-exec" flag, we use the "-execdir" flag. Instead of performing the command from the directory where "find" was invoced, it performs it from each subdirectory. This sorts the files into subfolders for us!

$ find ./software-foo*/ -type f -name '*01.rar' -execdir unrar x {} \;

Hope this helps in the future! This is one reason why the command line is hard to replace fully in a GUI application.