mkdir places_challenge_dataset declare -a TARPARTS for i in {a..z} do TARPARTS[${#TARPARTS[@]}]="http://data.csail.mit.edu/places/places365/train_large_split/${i}.tar" done ls printf "%s\n" "${TARPARTS[@]}" > places_challenge_dataset/places365_train.txt cd places_challenge_dataset/ xargs -a places365_train.txt -n 1 -P 8 wget [...] ls *.tar | xargs -i tar xvf {}