Tutorial - Using WinRAR command-line tools

When you install WinRar, two command-line tools are also installed, rar.exe and unrar.exe. They will be located in C:\Program Files\WinRAR by default.

Here's an example of how to extract the contents of a single rar file:

1. open a command prompt
   
   (Windows 2000/xp, choose start->programs->accessories->Command Prompt)
2. add the winrar tools to the path:
   
   c:\> set path="C:\Program Files\WinRAR\";%path%
3. switch to the directory where you want your files to extract to:
   
   c:\> cd /d z:\some_folder
4. use unrar to extract the file:
   z:\some_folder> unrar e c:\some_rar_file.rar

You can of course wrap all of this into a batch file that loops through all of the .rar files in a folder. Here's a quicky sample (doesn't handle spaces in .rar file names):

For detailed information on windows batch files, please see:

• How to use Windows BATCH files
• Microsoft Windows XP Batchfile Documentation

OSX documentation [new]

1. Open a terminal window.
2. In the terminal window, navigate to the folder containing your .rar files:
   
   cd /<path-to-files>
3. Run the following command:
   for i in *.rar; do unrar e "$i"; done
   Note: "unrar" may need to be replaced with the full path to your unrar executable. For example, if unrar is installed in /usr/local/bin, the command becomes:
   for i in *.rar; do /usr/local/bin/unrar e "$i"; done
   
   OSX unrar is available from RAR Labs, here