dtrx1

Cleanly extract many archive types

Usage

dtrx [OPTIONS] ARCHIVE [ARCHIVE ...]

Overview

dtrx extracts archives in a number of different formats; it currently supports tar, zip (including self-extracting .exe files), cpio, rpm, deb, gem, 7z, cab, rar, lzh, arj, and InstallShield files. It can also decompress files compressed with gzip, bzip2, lzma, xz, lrzip, lzip, or compress.

In addition to providing one command to handle many different archive types, dtrx also aids the user by extracting contents consistently. By default, everything will be written to a dedicated directory that's named after the archive. dtrx will also change the permissions to ensure that the owner can read and write all those files.

To run dtrx, simply call it with the archive(s) you wish to extract as arguments. For example:

$ dtrx coreutils-5.*.tar.gz

You may specify URLs as arguments as well. If you do, dtrx will use wget -c to download the URL to the current directory and then extract what it downloads. This may fail if you already have a file in the current directory with the same name as the file you're trying to download.

Options

dtrx supports a number of options to mandate specific behavior:

-r, --recursive: With this option, dtrx will search inside the archives you specify to see if any of the contents are themselves archives, and extract those as well.

--one, --one-entry

Normally, if an archive only contains one file or directory with a name that doesn't match the archive's, dtrx will ask you how to handle it. With this option, you can specify ahead of time what should happen. Possible values are:

inside: Extract the file/directory inside another directory named after the archive. This is the default.

rename: Extract the file/directory in the current directory, and then rename it to match the name of the archive.

here: Extract the file/directory in the current directory.

-o, --overwrite: Normally, dtrx will avoid extracting into a directory that already exists, and instead try to find an alternative name to use. If this option is listed, dtrx will use the default directory name no matter what.

-f, --flat: Extract all archive contents into the current directory, instead of their own dedicated directory. This is handy if you have multiple archive files which all need to be extracted into the same directory structure. Note that existing files may be overwritten with this option.

-n, --noninteractive: dtrx will normally ask the user how to handle certain corner cases, such as how to handle an archive that only contains one file. This option suppresses those questions; dtrx will instead use sane, conservative defaults.

-l, -t, --list, --table: Don't extract the archives; just list their contents on standard output.

-m, --metadata: Extract the metadata from .deb and .gem archives, instead of their normal contents.

-q, --quiet: Suppress warning messages. List this option twice to make dtrx silent.

-v, --verbose: Show the files that are being extracted. List this option twice to print debugging information.

--help: Display basic help.

--version: Display dtrx's version, copyright, and license information.

Releases

8 releases since Debian 6.0 (Squeeze); the text changed 5 times.