---
title: "Generic File Extracter"
description: "Simple but effective and handy utility for people dealing with hell lot of zips. type -P $1 and /dev/null || echo $1 not."
url: "https://h3manth.com/scribe/generic-file-extracter/"
canonical_url: "https://h3manth.com/scribe/generic-file-extracter/"
markdown_url: "https://h3manth.com/scribe/blog/generic-file-extracter.md"
publishDate: "2009-12-31T00:00:00.000Z"
author: "Hemanth HM"
category: "linux"
tags: ["linux","opensource"]
word_count: 63
reading_time_minutes: 1
x_markdown_tokens: 176
content_signal: "ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes"
---

# Generic File Extracter

> Simple but effective and handy utility for people dealing with hell lot of zips. type -P $1 and /dev/null || echo $1 not.

Simple but effective and handy utility for people dealing with hell lot of zips. ``

## Test if the program is installed

type -P $1 &>/dev/null || echo $1 not installed! ; exit 1;

## Try to extract

Switch for the appropriate case. Check out the attached file, place it in /usr/bin or any appropriate location with the PATH exported for the same.