trash

Cross-platform command-line app for moving files and directories to the trash
A safer alternative to rm

Works on OS X, Linux and Windows.

In contrast to rm which is dangerous and permanently delete files, this only moves them to the trash, which is much safer and reversible. You should not alias rm to trash however as that would break most scripts relying on rm behaviour. Rather use trash from the CLI and in your own scripts. I would also recommend reading my guide on safeguarding rm.

CLI

$ npm install --global trash

$ trash --help

  Usage
    trash [--force] <path> [<path> ...]

  Example
    trash unicorn.png rainbow.png

Globbing support is left up to your shell, but $ trash *.png should expand to the above in most shells.

The --force option makes it always succeed even on errors by exiting with code 1:

$ trash --force build && BUILDSTUFF

This can be useful when used in platform agnostic scripts like npm package.json scripts, as eg. trash build; BUILDSTUFF doesn't work on Windows.

API

$ npm install --save trash

var trash = require('trash');

trash(['unicorn.png', 'rainbow.png'], function (err) {
	console.log('done');
});

Info

On OS X osx-trash is used.

On Linux xdg-trash is used.

On Windows cmdutils is used.

Tip

Add alias t=trash to your .zshrc/.bashrc to reduce typing: $ t unicorn.png.

FAQ

But I can do the same thing with mv

Not really. The mv command isn't cross-platform and moving to trash is not just about moving the file to a "trash" directory. On all OSes you'll run into file conflicts. The user won't easily be able to restore the file. It won't work on an external drive. The trash directory location varies between Windows versions. For Linux there's a whole spec you need to follow. On OS X you'll loose the Put back feature.

Related

See empty-trash for emptying the trash.

License

MIT © Sindre Sorhus