All I ever need to remember: atool -x archive.{zip,jar,rar,cab,deb,rpm,tar,tar.{gz,Z,bz2,xz}} (list of supported formats is not complete) With a simple a

All I ever need to remember: atool -x archive.{zip,jar,rar,cab,deb,rpm,tar,tar.{gz,Z,bz2,xz}} (list of supported formats is not complete) With a simple alias, it isn't even necessary to remember the -x alias xx="atool -x" This also protects you from badly made archives that explode hundreds of files into the current directory. All decompression is done in a temporary subdir, which is removed if there was only one file/dir at the top level. For xkcd, see atool's --explain or --simulate options that show you the generated tar/etc commands. http://www.nongnu.org/atool/ http://www.nongnu.org/atool/