The syntax for using the WinRAR executables is: RAR or UNRAR. Using WinRAR’s command-line tools is similar to those for IZArc and 7-Zip. Although WinRAR is shareware, it can be used on a trial basis for 40 days. Both are located in the “C:\Program Files\WinRAR” folder in the installable version. It includes two command-line tools, rar.exe and unrar.exe, where rar.exe compresses and unrar.exe uncompresses files. WinRAR is a popular and powerful archive manager that can be used from the command-line or with scripting languages such as batch files. The information in this guide was tested on a Windows PC running Vista. This guide is an extension of a previous post, Automate Zipping Tasks using the Command-line Interface that explained the use of the command-line tools for two free compression utilities, IZArc and 7-Zip. This guide describes the use of the WinRAR command-line tools (v5.01) for compressing and uncompressing files in a directory and their use in batch files (for IZArc and 7-zip, see this post).
