"rm-trash" utility puts the files you delete in a shell safely into the Trash (Recycle bin). The script is meant to be used in place of rm system command in linux .

This solves accidental removals. This utility is meant to be used as an alias with rm directly and unlike other such scripts , it can handle duplicate files in the trash and works for recursive arguments and any other options that rm supports. This is a wrapper around rm and thus supports all options of rm.

• Meant to be used in place of rm
• Handles all arguments that rm can take
• If the deletion was unsuccessful because of wrong arguments , then it deletes the trashed files to save space.
• Handles the file name collisions with the files already in trash
• Handles some permission issues automatically
• If rm is called from any other script or indirectly then the system 'rm' command is used automatically
• Shows the appropriate error messages exactly like those which arise in rm

It first gets the arguments that you would specify for rm command and then if the files have right permissions then saves the files in the trash with the required meta data about it. After saving , it gives the file for deletion to rm with the given options.

If deletion of was unsuccesful for some reason , it deletes back the saved file or folder from the trash to save space.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nateshmbhat/rm-trash
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rm-trash

• (Optional step) Its recommended to set an alias to "rm-trash" for easier access to the command :

  Append the below lines to ~/.bash_aliases file to set alias when the shell starts

  alias "trash"="rm-trash"
  # or 
  alias "del"="rm-trash"

Usage is just like we use the rm command normally and supports all options of rm.

rm-trash filename foldername -r

Now it shows your filename in the Trash which can then be easily restored to any desired location.

Options :

--no-trash : no trash option .

Add this option to the command to prevent it from putting the files to trash. Useful when you want to remove huge amount of files and sizes.

rm-trash folder/ -r --no-trash