TRASH(1)
trash(1) - A near drop-in replacement for rm that uses the trash bin
The name of this software is "trash-d" however its executable is simply called trash. This manual favors the latter, but the two should be considered interchangeable.
trash [option]... file...
A near drop-in replacement for rm(1) that uses the FreeDesktop trash bin. Written in the D programming language using only D's Phobos standard library.
The options and flags are intended to mirror rm's closely, with some additional long options for the trash specific features.
-d, --dir : Remove empty directories.
-r, -R, --recursive : Delete directories and their contents.
-v, --verbose : Print more information.
-i, --interactive : Ask before each deletion.
-I, --interact-once : Ask before deleting 3 or more files, or deleting recursively
-f, --force : Don't prompt and ignore errors.
--version : Output the version and exit.
--list : List out the files in the trash.
--orphans : List orphaned files in the trash.
--delete file : Delete a file from the trash.
--restore file : Restore a file from the trash.
--empty : Empty the trash bin.
--rm files... : Escape hatch to permanently delete a file.
-h, --help : This help information.
The --help, --version, --list, --orphans, --restore, --delete, and --empty flags all cause the program to short-circuit and perform only that operation and no others. Their precedence is in that order exactly, and is intended to cause the least destruction.
Therefore the command 'trash --empty --list' will list the trash bin and NOT
empty it.
Note: Before version 11 trash-d followed a slightly incorrect precedence order.
One of trash-d's primary goals is near compatibility with the GNU rm(1)
tool. The keyword here is "near". The goal is not exact flag-for-flag
compatibility with rm, but you should be able to 'alias rm=trash' and
not notice the difference. But since rm has different failure states and
error messages it can never be 100% compatible.
Additionally since there are a few different implementations of rm(1) (BSDs and so on) that are all subtly incompatible with each other I can't guarantee compatibility with all versions.
As of version 16 unknown options will throw an error. Prior to version 16 unknown options were silently ignored.
As of version 17 trash-d will not follow symlinks recursively through directories. This may in some cases be inconsistent with rm but errs on the side of not deleting your files.
XDG_DATA_HOME This variable is used to determine where the default trash directory is for this user as per the FreeDesktop specification.
TRASH_D_DIR Override the trash directory to the specified path, useful for trashing on removable devices.
$XDG_DATA_HOME/Trash Standard location of trash files and metadata as per the FreeDesktop specification. Used in the absence of $TRASH_D_DIR.
~/.local/share/Trash The fallback path used in the absence of both $XDG_DATA_HOME and $TRASH_D_DIR.
trash exits with the status code 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
rm(1), user-dirs.conf(5)
By mimicking rm this utility is partially POSIX compliant however this is NOT to be relied upon for any purpose.
trash-d is compliant with the FreeDesktop trash specification: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/trash-spec/trashspec-latest.html
Steven vanZyl rushsteve1@rushsteve1.us
The up-to-date sources can be found at: https://github.com/rushsteve1/trash-d