Frivolous Musings

Some thoughts on politics/lit/tech/life itself

Tar Hack

There’s a funny xkcd cartoon about the tar command:

How does one remember those ridiculous single letter commands? My preferred solution is to first consult with TLDR, but Justin Abrahams has a fun solution over at his blog:

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

(Appended, naturally, to .bashrc.)