How to move files to trash from command line?

Question

I do a lot of terminal work, and today had the experience of typing

rm fileInQuestion.txt

Before finding out that I did actually need fileInQuestion.txt. If I'd deleted in the GUI then I would have just gotten it out of the Trash. I'd like to know if it's possible to overload 'rm' in the Terminal in such a way that it sends the file/files to the Trash on the way out.

Answer 1

I wouldn't advise aliasing rm to mv as you might get in the habit of rm not permanently deleting files and then run into issues on other computers or under other user accounts when it does permanently delete.

I wrote a set of bash scripts that add more Mac OS X-like command line tools (in addition to a number of the built-in ones like open, pbcopy, pbpaste, etc.), most importantly trash. My version of trash will do all the correct things that aliasing rm won't (and hopefully nothing bad, but I've been using it on my own Macs for a few years now without any lost data), including: renaming the file like Finder does if a file with the same name already exists, putting files in the correct Trash folder on external volumes; it also has some added niceties, like: it attempts to use AppleScript when available so you get the nice trash sound and such (but doesn't require it so you can still use it via SSH when no user is logged in), it can give you Trash size across all volumes.

You can grab my tools-osx suite from my site or the latest and greatest version from the GitHub repository.

There's also a trash command developed by Ali Rantakari, but I haven't tested that one myself.

Answer 2

The trash command line tool can be installed via brew install trash or port install trash.

It allows you to restore trashed files via command line or the Finder.

Answer 3

I have an executable called rem somewhere in my $PATH with the following contents:

EDIT: code below is a revised and improved version in collaboration with Dave Abrahams:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import sys
import subprocess

if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    files = []
    for arg in sys.argv[1:]:
        if os.path.exists(arg):
            p = os.path.abspath(arg).replace('\\', '\\\\').replace('"', '\\"')
            files.append('the POSIX file "' + p + '"')
        else:
            sys.stderr.write(
                "%s: %s: No such file or directory\n" % (sys.argv[0], arg))
    if len(files) > 0:
        cmd = ['osascript', '-e',
               'tell app "Finder" to move {' + ', '.join(files) + '} to trash']
        r = subprocess.call(cmd, stdout=open(os.devnull, 'w'))
        sys.exit(r if len(files) == len(sys.argv[1:]) else 1)
else:
    sys.stderr.write(
        'usage: %s file(s)\n'
        '       move file(s) to Trash\n' % os.path.basename(sys.argv[0]))
    sys.exit(64) # matches what rm does on my system

It behaves in exactly the same way as deleting from the Finder. (See blog post here.)

Answer 4

Use the terminal command osascript, the AppleScript interpreter.

osascript -e "tell application \"Finder\" to delete POSIX file \"${PWD}/${InputFile}\""

This tells AppleScript to tell Finder to send the file to trash.

PWD is needed for relative file paths, as AppleScript does not handle that well.

Answer 5

a modern approach using swift

https://github.com/reklis/recycle

//
// main.swift
// recycle
//
// usage: recycle <files or directories to throw out>
//

import Foundation
import AppKit

var args = NSProcessInfo.processInfo().arguments
args.removeAtIndex(0) // first item in list is the program itself

var w = NSWorkspace.sharedWorkspace()
var fm = NSFileManager.defaultManager()

for arg in args {
    let path = arg.stringByStandardizingPath;
    let file = path.lastPathComponent
    let source = path.stringByDeletingLastPathComponent

    w.performFileOperation(NSWorkspaceRecycleOperation,
        source:source,
        destination: "",
        files: [file],
        tag: nil)
}

Answer 6

I found a pretty nice code that can be added at the end of user's batch profile and causes rm to move the files to the trash each time it is run.

nano ~/.bash_profile

#... append at the end
function rm () {
  local path
  for path in "$@"; do
    # ignore any arguments
    if [[ "$path" = -* ]]; then :
    else
      # remove trailing slash
      local mindtrailingslash=${path%/}
      # remove preceding directory path
      local dst=${mindtrailingslash##*/}
      # append the time if necessary
      while [ -e ~/.Trash/"$dst" ]; do
        dst="`expr "$dst" : '\(.*\)\.[^.]*'` `date +%H-%M-%S`.`expr "$dst" : '.*\.\([^.]*\)'`"
      done
      mv "$path" ~/.Trash/"$dst"
    fi
  done
}

source: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080224175659423

Answer 7

This is an improvement to the answers given by Antony Smith and cde.

The problem with embedding a filename in a string that is passed to osascript via -e is that, on modern Unix-like systems, filenames can contain quotes, to the effect that parts of the filename could be run as AppleScript.

A safer way to do this is to read the filename from an environment variable:

trash() (
    : "${1:?}"
    case $1 in
        (/*) FNAME="$1" ;;
        (*)  FNAME="$(pwd)/$1"
    esac
    export FNAME
    exec osascript <<-EOF >/dev/null
        set fName to system attribute "FNAME"
        tell application "Finder" to delete my (POSIX file fName)
    EOF
)

If you add this function to your .bashrc or .zshrc, you can call trash from the command line. EDIT: Though turning this into a function that is actually useful requires more work, of course.

Answer 8

There are two utilities installable via Homebrew that can accomplish this:

1. trash

   This is a small command-line program for OS X that moves files or folders to the trash. The USP of this command is that enables to easily restore the files. A command to trash files/folders is no use if you can't restore files/folders after trashing them. From the command's website:

By default, trash asks Finder to move the specified files/folders to the trash instead of calling the system API to do this because of the "put back" feature that only works when trashing files through Finder.

-F

Ask Finder to move the files to the trash, instead of using the system API. This is slower, but it utilizes Finder's UI (e.g. sounds) and ensures that the "put back" feature works.

-l

List items currently in the trash. If this argument is used, no files need to be specified.

-e

Empty the trash. trash asks for confirmation before executing this action. If this argument is used, no files need to be specified.

To install trash run the following in Terminal:

brew install trash.

---

2. rmtrash

   A command line tool that move files to the trash. From the command's man page:

This command moves files to the trash rather than removing them totally from the file system. Very useful if you decide you want that file after all...

-u USERNAME

an optional argument. This will move the file to the specified user's trash. Note that you need sufficient privileges to accomplish this.

To install rmtrash run the following in Terminal:

brew install rmtrash.

Answer 9

Here's a pretty trivial one-line solution to add to your bash profile. Note that it will overwrite something with the same name in the trash already.

trash() { mv -fv "$@" ~/.Trash/ ; }

Usage:

• ~/Desktop $$$ touch a b c
• ~/Desktop $$$ ls
a b c
• ~/Desktop $$$ trash a b c
a -> /Users/ryan.tuck/.Trash/a
b -> /Users/ryan.tuck/.Trash/b
c -> /Users/ryan.tuck/.Trash/c
• ~/Desktop $$$ ls
• ~/Desktop $$$

Answer 10

While it is possible to make rm move files to Trash instead of removing them, I would advise against bringing the mindset of the safety net of graphical user interfaces to the UNIX shell. There are many ways to do serious damage using the terminal. The best advise IMHO is to simply think twice before hitting the enter key in a shell window.

If you want rm to remind you that you are about to delete a file consider using the following alias (for /bin/bash put this line in .bashrc in your home directory):

alias rm "rm -i"

This will make rm request confirmation before attempting to remove each file.

If you have TimeMachine running (I hope so!) you can always get your file from backup. This way you can lose at most one hour of work. Which is bad enough, of course. So think again before pressing that enter key!

Answer 11

Properly trashing stuff (so that it is definitely recoverable) is trickier than simply a mv to ~/.Trash.

osx-trash might be what you're looking for. (Caveat emptor - I haven't tried it, and cannot vouch for how safe it is.)

Answer 12

Check out trash-cli. It works cross-platform, no trash sound, and supports Put Back.

You can install it with (requires Node.js):

$ npm install --global trash-cli

Alternatively, if you don't want to use Node.js, you can install the native binary osx-trash manually.

Answer 13

In your .bashrc (or wherever you keep the parameters for your shell), try adding an alias that changes the behaviour of rm to moving stuff to ~/.Trash, as in:

alias rm='move/to/.Trash'

This alias if far from trivial to implement (at least for me) though, because the use of mv (the prime candidate to use for this job) is

mv file where

so having an alias that puts the 'where' part in front of the file to be moved might be pretty sketchy. I'll look into it an might get more substantial advice.

EDIT: I just tried to add the following to my .bashrc, and it works:

function trash { mv "$@" ~/.Trash ; }

It is much more primitive than other suggestions, but you avoid installing new stuff.

Answer 14

I have simply put this script

#!/bin/bash
application=$(basename "$0")
if [ "$#" == 0 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $application path [paths...]"
    exit 1
fi
trashdir="/Users/${USER}/.Trash"
while (( "$#" )); do
    if [ -e "$1" ]; then
        src=$(basename "$1")
        dst=$src
        while [ -e "$trashdir/$dst" ]; do
            dst=$src+`date +%H-%M-%S`
        done
        mv -f "$1" "$trashdir/$dst"
    else
        echo "$1" does not exist.
    fi
    shift
done

in ~/bin/trash, made it excutable chmod +x ~/bin/trash, and added the following line to ~/.bash_profile

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

Then one can use it as

$ trash broken.js olddir cleanup.*

Answer 15

A simple function could let you trash files by moving them to the user's .Trash folder:

trash() {
   mv $1 ~/.Trash
}