Safe substitute for OS X `rm`?

For OSX, you can use safe-rm

brew install safe-rm

You need to do an extra step to prefer it over default rm - add a symlink.

echo $PATH

For me, I have /usr/local/bin: first, the same dir as safe-rm install

Add symlink to safe-rm

ln -s /usr/local/bin/safe-rm /usr/local/bin/rm

To remove and restore the default rm you can remove the symlink rm /usr/local/bin/rm

The config file can be added at /etc/safe-rm.conf

e.g:

/private
/Applications
/Developer
/Library
/Network
/System
/Users
/Volumes
/test

Test with rm -rf /test it will deny delete from safe-rm.conf

hasseg.org/trash is an Objective-C utility like osx-trash.

I've written a shell function that doesn't overwrite files like mv * ~/.Trash would. It always moves items to the startup volume though.

trash() {
    for f in "$@"; do
        bn=$(basename "$f")
        while [ -e ~/.Trash/"$bn" ]; do
            bn="$bn $(date +%H.%M.%S %p)"
        done
        mv "$f" ~/.Trash/"$bn"
    done
}