Extract here makes subfolder. DO NOT WANT

[edward-holystone]

Someone please help me. I have 300 archives that I need to extract. The files inside are loose files and the archiver should be extracting them loose.
Instead it extracts them into a subfolder. It's a miracle I haven't started crying yet. Please help.

To elaborate, I am selecting all the files, right clicking and pressing "extract here." When I do that, it extracts the files into subfolder rather than directley into the folder I want them in.

[nerdtron]

hmm... try a script to extract each folder.
Are your archives sequential in names? that would be better. I assume you have the following names
sample directory structure:

nerdtron@node175:~/main_folder$ ls
archive10.tgz  archive2.tgz  archive4.tgz  archive6.tgz  archive8.tgz
archive1.tgz   archive3.tgz  archive5.tgz  archive7.tgz  archive9.tgz
extract.sh

We want to extract all those archives to main folder and not create any subfolders right?

 cd /path/to/the/archives
nano extract.sh

Paste the following, and then save and exit the editor.

#!/bin/bash
for archive in  *.tgz                  ##list all archives for loop
do
tar -zxvf "$archive"                   ##extract the archive
dirname="${archive%%.*}"         ##get the name of the created subfolder
  mv  "$dirname"/* .                  ##move all contents of the subfolder up to the current directory
done

Run the script.

bash extract.sh

After extraction, there will still be subfolders but they won't contain any file cause you already moved them on the script.

[Vaphell]

sounds like a non issue.

1. extract here with subfolders
2. mv /dir/*/* -t /dir
3. delete empty subdirs

[edward-holystone]

I'm not exactly certain what you're telling me to do. These are all the archives, I want to extract the loose files inside to a folder named "songs" located at /home/edward/downloads/songs. Yes this is Ubuntu, it just looks different because I mess around with it a lot.

[The Spectre]

Give PeaZip a try...
http://peazip.sourceforge.net/peazip-linux.html

You can Download the portable version so you don't even have to install it to try it out.

[Vaphell]

i am telling you should extract the files either way because gathering them in one place is a rather trivial task
just give correct paths/dir names so you can get your short terminal command that will do it in 1 second.

it will be along the lines of

mv -t . ./*/*

[edward-holystone]

What am I supposed to write in place of the periods and asterisks?
Sorry if I'm being difficult, but this makes no sense to me:
mv -t . ./*/*

[philinux]

Found this

for i in *.tar.gz; do tar xvzf $i -C path/to/output/directory; done

from here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5...-new-directory

I would move a couple of archives to a test directory and try it out first.

[Vaphell]

What am I supposed to write in place of the periods and asterisks?
Sorry if I'm being difficult, but this makes no sense to me:
mv -t . ./*/*

. is current dir * matches anything
post your directories so you get a ready to use command

either way looking at the screenshots
ctrl+alt+t to open terminal

cd ~/Downloads/*Beatmap*100

enter your_home_dir/Downloads/<something>Beatmap<something>100, if the name is unique and matching, the shell should resolve it despite * wildcards. Had to use wildcards because the full name is not visible in the screenshots

mv -t . ./*/*

move all files from subdirs ( ./*/* = current dir/subdirs with any name (all)/everything with any name to a target dir . (current)

cd ../*Beatmap*200

go up 1 level (Downloads, ..=parent dir) and down to <something>Beatmap<something>200

mv -t . ./*/*

again move anything from subdirs to the top/current directory

cd ../*Beatmap*300

enter parent_dir/<something>Beatmap<something>300

mv -t . ./*/*

move stuff



this should move all the files from the extraction dirs to their respective master dir
extract one rar and check if the relevant pair of commands works
you can copy paste these commands one by one by highlighting here and middleclicking in terminal to paste or with ctrl+c/ctrl+shift+v

[edward-holystone]

OK I give up with.

These three folders contain the subfolders inside of which the loose files are located:
/home/edward/Documents/Beatmap1
/home/edward/Documents/Beatmap2
/home/edward/Documents/Beatmap3

I want to move the loose files inside the subfolders into this folder:
/home/edward/Documents/Songs

The subfolders are called "Beatmap Pack #001" All the way to "Beatmap Pack #300"
The loose files in each subfolder have completley random names, starting with different numbers, letters and symbols.