Delete

A simple, cross-platform, command line move-to-trash.

License PyPI Version Python Versions Documentation Downloads

Release v1.1.4. (Installation)

But why?

The delete command is a simple alternative to using the standard rm command. Using rm as a matter of course can be dangerous and prone to mistakes. Once a file is unlinked with rm it cannot be recovered (without having backups).

All major graphical environments offer a “move to trash” option. This does a clean move operation to a “trash” folder. Once a file as been put in the trash it can be recovered easily. Periodically, the trash can be emptied if desired.

delete is a command line implementation of this metaphor. It maintains a basic sqlite3 database of files and folders put in the trash. Using the --list option will list the contents. Using --restore will restore a file or folder from the trash. Using --empty will purge anything put in the trash by delete.

Getting Started

Installation

If you already have Python 3.7 on your system, you can install delete using Pip.

pip install delete-cli

Basic Usage

Calling delete with no arguments or with the --help flag yield typically Unix style behavior, print a usage or help statement, respectively. For detailed usage and examples you can read the manual page, man delete.

Deleting files and folders is as simple as:

delete file1.txt file2.txt folderA

Files or folders that get deleted with the same basename will have a suffix added before the extension (e.g., file1.1.txt, file1.2.txt, …).

Restore files using their basename (in the trash), their full path (in the trash) or their original full path.

delete --restore file1.txt
delete --restore $TRASH_FOLDER/file2.txt
delete --restore /original/path/folderA

List the contents of the trash along with their original full paths.

delete --list

Use --empty to completely empty the trash. This does not remove the $TRASH_FOLDER. It iterates through the full listing of contents from the $TRASH_DATABASE. If anything is left in the directory an error is logged.

delete --empty

Recommendations

Add the following to your shell’s login profile to shorten the invocation.

alias del="delete"

Known Issues

  • On macOS systems the default ~/.Trash is protected and does not allow a listing of the directory. delete functions normally aside from an error message being printed when using --empty.

Configuration

delete has no real configuration other than where on the system to keep the trash folder and its database, both of which are controlled by the below environment variables.

Environment Variables

TRASH_FOLDER

By default, the program will move objects to the ~/.Trash folder. This is for consistency with systems like macOS and most Linux distributions. In this way, the empty trash operation on these systems will also remove anything put there by the delete program via the command line. You can specify a different location via the TRASH_FOLDER environment variable. For example, in your ~/.bashrc.

export TRASH_FOLDER=$HOME/.deleted
TRASH_DATABASE

By default, the path to the database is ${TRASH_FOLDER}.db, which would be ~/.Trash.db if the TRASH_FOLDER environment variable is undefined. This path should not be inside the trash folder. You can specify a different location via the TRASH_DATABASE environment variable. For example, in your ~/.bashrc.

export TRASH_DATABASE=$HOME/.my_trash.db