Creating a nondestructive 'rm'

[Walter Tondu]

In article <4460006 at hpindda.HP.COM> burdick at hpindda.HP.COM (Matt Burdick) writes:
>Does anyone have a nice alias or shell script so that when I 'rm' a file it
>will actually move it to, for instance, a tmp subdirectory in my home
>directory?
>
>Right now, I have an alias that does this, but the problem is that may
>alias doesn't handle all of rm's flags.  For instance, it complains if I
>type in 'rm -rf *', since 'mv' doesn't have the -r flag and also can't move
>across file partitions.
>
>-- 
>Matt Burdick                    | Hewlett-Packard
>burdick%hpda at hplabs.hp.com      | Technical Communications Lab

Here's a solution which I use.  This comes from "Tricks of the UNIX
Masters" by Russel G. Sage. Published by Howard W. Sams & Co.
I have modified it a tad in order to fit my needs more exactly
usage:
    1)	rm -l;	- lists all files that have been removed to
		- 'can' directory.
    2)	rm -r;	- remove permanently all files that have been
		- previously removed.
    3)	rm -f;	- use /bin/rm and force removal.

(strip following code of leading "*".

*:
*# @(#) can v1.0 Maintain trash can
*
*CAN=$HOME/.trashcan
*
*#if [ ! d $CAN ]
*#then
*#	mkdir $CAN
*#fi
*
*if [ $# -eq 0 ]
*then
*	echo "usage can [-l] [-r] [-f] file [file ...]" >&2
*	exit 0
*fi
*
*if [ "`echo \"$1\" | cut -c1`" = "-" ]
*then
*	case $1 in
*	-l)	echo "$CAN:"
*		/bin/ls $CAN
*		exit 0;;
*	-r)	echo "removing $CAN/*:"
*		/bin/rm -rf $CAN/*
*		exit 0;;
*	-f)	echo "force removal"
*		/bin/rm -rf $@
*		exit 0;;
*	-?)	echo "usage can [-l] [-r] file [file ...]" >&2
*		exit 0;;
*	esac
*fi
*
*mv $@ $CAN


____________________________________________________________
.plan - to indulge whenever possible
	
    walter tondu
____________________________________________________________