safe-rm

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|_____  ||       ||    ___||    ___|       |    __  ||       |
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|_______||__| |__||___|    |_______|       |___|  |_||_|   |_|

Safe-rm, a drop-in and much safer replacement of the unix rm command with ALMOST FULL features of the original rm.

The project was initially developed on Mac OS X and has been continuously used by myself since then, with later testing conducted on Linux. If you encounter any issues during use, please feel free to submit an issue.

Features

• Supports both MacOS and Linux with full test coverage.
• Using safe-rm, the files or directories you choose to remove will be moved to the system Trash instead of simply deleting them. You could put them back whenever you want manually.
  • On MacOS, safe-rm will use AppleScript to delete files or directories as much as possible to enable the built-in "put-back" capability in the system Trash bin.
  • On Linux, it also follows the operating system's conventions for handling duplicate files in the Trash to avoid overwriting
  • On Linux, it can optionally keep a trash directory per filesystem/mount so deletes across devices stay instant (opt-in, see SAFE_RM_TRASH_PER_MOUNT)
• Supports Custom configurations.

Supported options

For those implemented options, safe-rm will act exactly the same as the original rm command:

Option	Brief	Description
-i, --interactive	Interactive	Prompts you to confirm before removing each file
-I, --interactive=once	Less Interactive	Prompts only once before removing more than three files or when recursively removing directories
-f, --force	Force	Removes files without prompting for confirmation, ignoring nonexistent files and overriding file protections
-r, -R, --recursive, --Recursive	Recursive	Removes directories and their contents recursively. Required for deleting directories
-v, --verbose	Verbose	Displays detailed information about each file or directory being removed
-d, '--directory'	Remove Empty Directories	safe-rm can check and only remove empty directories specifically with this flag
--	End of Options	Used to indicate the end of options. Useful if a filename starts with a -

Combined short options are also supported, such as

-rf, -riv, -rfv, etc

The BSD-only options -P (overwrite), -W (undelete), and -x (don't cross mount points) are intentionally not supported, since they have no meaning for a trash-based tool; safe-rm reports them as an illegal option rather than silently ignoring them.

Usual Installation

Add an alias to your ~/.bashrc script,

alias rm='/path/to/bin/rm.sh'

and /path/to is where you git clone shell-safe-rm in your local machine.

Permanent Installation

If you have NPM (NodeJS) installed (RECOMMENDED):

npm i -g safe-rm

Or by using the source code, within the root of the current repo (not recommended, may be unstable):

# If you have NodeJS installed
npm link

# If you don't have NodeJS or npm installed
make && sudo make install

# For those who have no `make` command:
sudo sh install.sh

Installing safe-rm will put safe-rm in your /bin directory. In order to use safe-rm, you need to add an alias to your ~/.bashrc script and in all yours currently open terminals, like this:

alias rm='safe-rm'

After installation and alias definition, when you execute rm command in the Terminal, lines of below will be printed:

$ rm
safe-rm
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file ...
     unlink file

which helps to tell safe-rm from the original rm.

Uninstall

First remove the alias rm=... line from your ~/.bashrc file, then

npm uninstall -g safe-rm

Or

make && sudo make uninstall

Or

sudo sh uninstall.sh

Advanced Sections

Configuration

Since 3.0.0, you could create a configuration file located at ~/.safe-rm/config in your $HOME directory, to support

• defining your custom trash directory
• allowing safe-rm to permanently delete files and directories that are already in the trash
• disallowing safe-rm to use AppleScript

For the description of each config, you could refer to the sample file here

# You could
cp -r ./.safe-rm ~/

If you want to use a custom configuration file

alias="SAFE_RM_CONFIG=/path/to/safe-rm.conf /path/to/shell-safe-rm/bin/rm.sh"

Or if it is installed by npm:

alias="SAFE_RM_CONFIG=/path/to/safe-rm.conf safe-rm"

Disable Put-back Functionality on MacOS (MacOS only)

In ~/.safe-rm/config

export SAFE_RM_USE_APPLESCRIPT=no

By default, on MacOS, safe-rm uses AppleScript as much as possible so that removed files could be put back from system Trash app.

Change the Default Trash Bin Other Than System Default

export SAFE_RM_TRASH=/path/to/trash

Note (MacOS): setting a custom SAFE_RM_TRASH makes safe-rm move files with mv instead of AppleScript, which disables the Finder "Put Back" capability (the same trade-off as SAFE_RM_USE_APPLESCRIPT=no). You can still drag items back out of the trash folder manually.

Restore / "Put Back" Support

Whether a trashed item can be restored depends on which path safe-rm uses:

Situation	Mechanism	Restorable
MacOS, default system trash	AppleScript (Finder)	✅ Finder Put Back
MacOS, custom SAFE_RM_TRASH, SAFE_RM_USE_APPLESCRIPT=no, or a symlink target	mv	❌ no metadata (drag back manually)
Linux	mv + a FreeDesktop .trashinfo	✅ via the desktop trash's Restore

Faster Deletes Across Filesystems (Per-Mount Trash, Linux only)

By default, safe-rm moves everything into the home trash. Removing a file that lives on another filesystem/mount (an external drive, a separate partition) then becomes a slow cross-device copy instead of an instant move.

When SAFE_RM_TRASH_PER_MOUNT is enabled, safe-rm routes each target to a trash directory on the same filesystem, so the move stays instant:

export SAFE_RM_TRASH_PER_MOUNT=yes

It follows the FreeDesktop.org Trash specification for mount-point trash directories: it uses $topdir/.Trash/$uid when the volume has an administrator-created .Trash directory that passes the spec's checks (a real directory, with the sticky bit, not a symlink), otherwise it creates and uses $topdir/.Trash-$uid. Files trashed there record a Path relative to the volume's top directory, so standard desktop trash tools can still restore them.

Pay ATTENTION that:

• It is Linux only. On MacOS the default AppleScript/Finder behavior already trashes per-volume.
• It is opt-in: off unless SAFE_RM_TRASH_PER_MOUNT starts with y/Y.
• It only applies when using the default trash. Setting a custom SAFE_RM_TRASH consolidates everything there and disables per-mount routing.
• If the per-mount trash cannot be created (for example, a read-only mount), safe-rm falls back to the home trash.

Permanent Delete Files or Directories that Are Already in the Trash

export SAFE_RM_PERM_DEL_FILES_IN_TRASH=yes

Restrict Removals To A Safe Directory Scope

export SAFE_RM_SCOPE="$HOME"

When SAFE_RM_SCOPE is set, safe-rm only removes targets under that directory. Targets outside the configured scope will be skipped and reported as unsafe.

For example:

SAFE_RM_SCOPE="$HOME" safe-rm -rf /
# rm: target '/' skipped, unsafe directory scope

You could also use a relative scope such as .:

SAFE_RM_SCOPE=. safe-rm -rf ./foo
SAFE_RM_SCOPE=. safe-rm -rf ../
# rm: target '../' skipped, unsafe directory scope

Honor Options After Operands (rm dir -rf)

GNU rm (most Linux distros) accepts options anywhere on the command line, so rm dir -rf works like rm -rf dir. BSD rm (MacOS) does not — it stops parsing options at the first operand and would treat -rf as a filename.

By default, safe-rm mirrors the host's real rm:

• On Linux: options after operands are parsed as flags (GNU style).
• On MacOS: options after operands are treated as filenames (BSD style).

To override the auto-detection (e.g. on Alpine/BusyBox where rm does not permute):

# Force GNU-style permutation
export SAFE_RM_OPTIONS_ANYWHERE=yes

# Force BSD-style strict ordering
export SAFE_RM_OPTIONS_ANYWHERE=no

-- always terminates option parsing in either mode.

Protect Files And Directories From Deleting

If you want to protect some certain files or directories from deleting by mistake, you could create a .gitignore file under the "~/.safe-rm/" directory, you could write .gitignore rules inside the file.

If a path is matched by the rules that defined in ~/.safe-rm/.gitignore, the path will be protected and could not be deleted by safe-rm

For example, in the ~/.safe-rm/.gitignore

/path/to/be/protected

And when executing

$ safe-rm /path/to/be/protected           # or
$ safe-rm /path/to/be/protected/foo       # or
$ safe-rm -rf /path/to/be/protected/bar

# An error will occur

But pay attention that, by adding the protected pattern above, if we:

$ safe-rm -rf /path/to

To keep the performance of safe-rm and avoid conducting unnecessary file system traversing, this would not prevent /path/to/be/protected/foo from removing.

Pay ATTENTION that:

• Before adding protected rules, i.e. placing the ".gitignore" inside the "~/.safe-rm/" directory, it requires git to be installed in your environment
• The ".gitignore" patterns apply to the root directory ("/"), which means that the patterns defined within it need to be relative to the root directory.
• Avoid adding / in the protected rules file, or everything will be protected