trash

A friendlier implementation of the rm command.

Purpose

rm can be a little scary sometimes and I wanted an implementation that I didn't have to stare at for a full minute to make sure I was absolutely doing the correct thing before pressing enter.

With trash, instead of the item(s) being permanently deleted, they will be moved to a directory created by trash, which will be stored in the user's tmp directory. If an item was trashed by mistake, it can be moved back (and trash even can help with that!). Once the user's computer restarts, the item(s) will be deleted per normal OS process, but it still gives the user time/ability to correct any mistakes.

Features

• Ability to send one or more files to the trash
  • Just like with rm each argument is going to be acted on
  • Supports UNIX globbing
• History
  • undo the last action
  • view the history
• Ultimately the files will be deleted, just like with rm if the user takes no action
• Speed and safety of Rust
• Explain Mode - Can tell you what will happen instead of performing the action
• Pretty color output

Usage

# Moves my_doc.txt to the trash
trash my_doc.txt

# Moves all contents of my_dir to the trash, leaving it empty. -v (verbose) logs each move as it happens.
trash -v my_dir/*

# Undo last move, moving the contents of my_dir back to it's original place(s)
trash -u

# Don't move anything, but log on the console what would happen in this command
trash -e my_dir/*

# View the history of all your prior trash commands
trash -w

# View help and exit
trash -h

Installation

Requires rustc and Cargo installed on your computer.

git clone https://github.com/jpal91/trash.git
cd trash
cargo install --path .

Hacking - OS

Currently this is built for Linux, but should be able to be re-tooled somewhat easily for Mac and Windows.

Mainly the resolve_paths function would just have to be implemented to fit the OS. Anything that is written in by hand would have to be altered to fit the desired path.

pub fn resolve_paths() -> TrashResult<(PathBuf, PathBuf)> {
    let mut hist_path = PathBuf::from_iter([
        dirs::home_dir().unwrap(), // This should be fine as it should work on Windows/Mac
        PathBuf::from(".config/trash/") // This would have to be changed
    ]);
    ...
    let mut trash_dir = env::temp_dir(); // This should also work
    trash_dir.push("trash/"); // may need to change
    ...
}