Safe substitute for OS X `rm`?

Question

I am used to having rm to alias something safer.

I have been using osx-trash, but once I upgrade to Ruby 1.9.2, this stops working.

I know about trash-cli from Python, but I would much prefer something that moves files to the Trash folder in OS X rather than another directory.

Does anyone have a good solution?

Answer 1

For OSX, you can use safe-rm

brew install safe-rm

You need to do an extra step to prefer it over default rm - add a symlink.

echo $PATH

For me, I have /usr/local/bin: first, the same dir as safe-rm install

Add symlink to safe-rm

ln -s /usr/local/bin/safe-rm /usr/local/bin/rm

To remove and restore the default rm you can remove the symlink rm /usr/local/bin/rm

The config file can be added at /etc/safe-rm.conf

e.g:

/private
/Applications
/Developer
/Library
/Network
/System
/Users
/Volumes
/test

Test with rm -rf /test it will deny delete from safe-rm.conf

Answer 2

hasseg.org/trash is an Objective-C utility like osx-trash.

I've written a shell function that doesn't overwrite files like mv * ~/.Trash would. It always moves items to the startup volume though.

trash() {
    for f in "$@"; do
        bn=$(basename "$f")
        while [ -e ~/.Trash/"$bn" ]; do
            bn="$bn $(date +%H.%M.%S %p)"
        done
        mv "$f" ~/.Trash/"$bn"
    done
}

Answer 3

Introduction (you can skip it)

For me rm -i would be enough, because it prompts you before deleting any file. However, some extra security provided by safe-rm isn't a bad idea at all.

A simple alias like rm=safe-rm -i could be enough, however rm -rf would not work, because -i is overriden by -f.

So, we have to make sure that -i always come after -f!

---

My solution (3 steps):

• Install safe-rm: brew install safe-rm

  You can still work with rm, but you have modify the RM_BIN in the next step

• Edit your ~/.profile (or bash_profile or whatever), and put the following code snippet, (which contain an alias and a function):

  alias rm="rm_i"
  
  function rm_i(){
  RM_BIN=safe-rm # you can replace it with regular rm if you like
  
  args=""
  files=""
  argsDone=0 # to make sure arguments are before the files
  
  for var in "$@"
  do
      if [[ $var == \-* ]] ; then
          if [ $argsDone -eq 1 ] ; then
              $RM_BIN # just to show the usage of rm
              return
          fi
          args+=" $var"
      else
          argsDone=1
          files+=" $var"
      fi
  done
  
  args+=" -i" # Put -i at the end (so rm -rf will not ignore it)
  
  $RM_BIN $args $files
  }
  

• Finally, logout and login, so the updates in the .profile are applied. DON'T use it before a logout/login!

---

Notes:

• It can be applied to any Linux distro, with slight modifications.
• It does NOT move your staff to thrash. It just asks you before deleting each file!
• It works with -rf and with regexes.
• If you really want to use rm -rf WITHOUT being asked for every single file/folder you can still use /bin/rm -rf (or safe-rm -rf if you had installed it).
• No more unintentional rm -rf or rm * ;)