untar-in-parallel.sh

#!/bin/bash

# function to extract each tar file
extract_tar() {
  local file="$1"
  local folder="$(basename "$file" .tar.bz2)"
  mkdir "$folder"
  tar -xjf "$file" -C "$folder"
}

# get the number of CPUs
num_cpu=$(grep -c ^processor /proc/cpuinfo)

# create a semaphore to limit the number of parallel processes
semaphore=$(mktemp -u)
mkfifo "$semaphore"
exec 3<>"$semaphore"
for ((i=0;i<num_cpu;i++)); do
  echo >&3
done

# loop through all .tar.bz2 files in the current directory
for file in *.tar.bz2; do
  read -u 3
  (
    extract_tar "$file"
    echo >&3
  ) &
done

# wait for all background jobs to finish
wait

# clean up the semaphore
exec 3>&-
rm "$semaphore"

extract tar files in parallel

This is a bash script that extracts all .tar.bz2 files in the current directory into separate folders. The script runs multiple extractions in parallel to speed up the process, with a limit of num_cpu parallel processes to avoid overloading the CPU. The script uses a semaphore mechanism to limit the number of parallel extractions and ensures that all extractions are complete before the script exits.

If the type of tar archive changes (e.g. from .tar.bz2 to .tar.gz), the tar command in the extract_tar function should be updated accordingly.

Note: The options used with the tar command may vary depending on the type of tar archive being extracted. Refer to the tar manual for more information.