Dancepill - extract them all

Quick extract script for shell (currently only tested with BASH).

The problem

You want to extract a tarball or ZIP and you don't care what format it is to pick up the right tool. More than that, you are not sure about the correct extension as the file might have been renamed incorrectly. And you want to extract fast.

tar -xzjfmpb cant_remember_all_the_options.tar.ball.blah.gz

Someone might use Midnight Commander but this is slow due to zillion of IO terminal operations. Dancepill script to the rescue!

Installation

The script is probably not packaged for any Linux distribution, but it's a short BASH script:

curl -o /usr/local/bin/e https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lzap/dancepill/master/dancepill

Make sure to inspect the contents of the script before executing it, it is very short after all.

Features

• Extracts all supported archives using the fastest method possible.

• File type detection using file utility - wrong extensions are simply ignored.

• If the archive does not contain only one file or directory, dancepill will create an extra directory for you. No more extracted junk in the current directory!

• If MIME is unknown, dancepill tries several "fallback" utilities one after another until one succeeds.

Supported formats

Format	Supported from
7z	1.0
arj	1.0
bzip2	1.0
cpio	1.0
gzip	1.0
lha	1.0
rar	1.0
rpm	1.0
tar	1.0
xz	1.0
zip	1.0
iso	1.0

History

• 1.0 - Initial version.
• 1.1 - Changed it to be just a script not a BASH function. Use xorriso instead of 7z

License

This is PUBLIC DOMAIN. Pull requests appreciated!