You can use the following shell script (I named it extract and I put it in ~/bin):

#!/bin/bash



if [ $# -lt 1 ];then

  echo "Usage: `basename $0` FILES"

  exit 1

fi



# I found the following function at https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/168/37944

# which I improved it a little. Many thanks to sydo for this idea.

extract () {

    for arg in $@ ; do

        if [ -f $arg ] ; then

            case $arg in

                *.tar.bz2)  tar xjf $arg      ;;

                *.tar.gz)   tar xzf $arg      ;;

                *.bz2)      bunzip2 $arg      ;;

                *.gz)       gunzip $arg       ;;

                *.tar)      tar xf $arg       ;;

                *.tbz2)     tar xjf $arg      ;;

                *.tgz)      tar xzf $arg      ;;

                *.zip)      unzip $arg        ;;

                *.Z)        uncompress $arg   ;;

                *.rar)      rar x $arg        ;;  # 'rar' must to be installed

                *.jar)      jar -xvf $arg     ;;  # 'jdk' must to be installed

                *)          echo "'$arg' cannot be extracted via extract()" ;;

            esac

        else

            echo "'$arg' is not a valid file"

        fi

    done

}



extract $@

Don't forget to make the script executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/extract

Usage:

extract file_1 file_2 ... file_n