What is the command line way of sending files to the recycle bin?

Question

Is there a command line program that can send files to the recycle bin? This is on XP and Vista.

Answer 1

CmdUtils has a utility called Recycle that does exactly that. [direct download]

More info:

To use the recycle command download the CmdUtils zip file and unzip the exe to your Windows folder. Adding them to the Windows folder would allow you to access the command globally without you having to specify the entire path to the executable. You can then start using the recycle command by typing in;

recycle filename.txt

You can also specify wildcards with the commands so typing in recycle *.txt will recycle any text files in the current directory. There is also a option to suppress the delete confirmation dialog by using the force flag with the command.

To delete a file without having to confirm is use the command

recycle –f filename.txt

The –f flag will tell the command to force a recycle without showing you the confirmation dialog.

Answer 2

If you have powershell installed:

$sh = new-object -comobject "Shell.Application"
$ns = $sh.Namespace(0).ParseName("PATH\TO\FILE\TO\DELETE")
$ns.InvokeVerb("delete")

Answer 3

There is no built-in way to do this, but there are third-party tools that can. I checked my program-dump folder and found a few options. They all work the same (e.g., recycle filename.ext), but they vary in performance, so it depends on what your needs are (e.g., are you recycling a lot of files?)

• MaDdoG Software’s Recycle is fast and has no output, but can throw a mysterious not-found error
• EasyTools’ DeleteXP is slow because it displays the progress to the console, but if you redirect it to nul, then it is the fastest and reliable
• Chris Yuen’s cmd-recycle is slowest, even when redirecting the (poorly formatted) output to nul

Answer 4

Can use external utility:

nircmd moverecyclebin *.tmp

Answer 5

I've had this question for a long time -- I finally took the matters into my own hand and I rolled my own utility cmd-recycle

I took a look at Recycle.exe in CmdUtils. The thing about it is that it pops out the traditional "Are you sure" dialog when you recycle (which can be removed by adding the -f argument). My program just does it (since you can always undo) which I think is more suitable for scripting purposes.

Answer 6

Without using third party tools I don't believe there is a "command line way of sending files to the recycle bin". You can get the full path to recycle bin on a Windows 7-10 system like this:

::get current user sid
for /f "tokens=2" %%i in ('whoami /user /NH') do set UID=%%i
:: create full path to current user recycle bin in a variable
set recyclebin=%systemdrive%\$Recycle.Bin\%UID%

echo %recyclebin%

The problem is that if you just move a file in there it doesn't appear in the recycle bin. You will only be able to see it in a command prompt. The recycle bin is a special folder. The windows API method of moving items to the recycle bin renames the file and stores information about it in a proprietary info file or files depending on the version of the OS. The third party tools suggested in the answers above invoke these API methods that handle all of that for you.

Some more info here: https://dereknewton.com/2010/06/recycle-bin-forensics-in-windows-7-and-vista/

Answer 7

Without external programs - deleteJS.bat. It uses Shell.Application invoke verb method. usage is simple:

call deleteJS.bat c:\someFile.txt
call deleteJS.bat d:\someFolder

Answer 8

Just improving upon EBGreen code, here is a convenient 1 line code that can be easily put into any batch file to get the job done. (assuming the fully qualified filepath is in %1 batch file parameter)

echo (new-object -comobject Shell.Application).Namespace(0).ParseName("%~1").InvokeVerb("delete") | powershell -command - 

Note the trailing - it make the powershell command to accept command text from stdin

Answer 9

I tried various programs for moving a file(s) to the recycle bin, but was unsatisfied with them for various reasons.

The main problem most have is the lack of decent status or error messages. Some just fail silently, so you think the program recycled something but in fact didn't do anything at all!

To remedy this, I've written a command line utility called bin-it that moves the specified file(s) to the Windows recycle bin. It supports wildcards and provides full status and error reporting. If something goes wrong, you'll know about it!

It's completely free and can be downloaded from here as binit.zip:
http://www.akiwi.co.uk/utilities.html

Answer 10

You can try RecycleIt. It will send files to the Windows Recycle Bin via command line.

EXAMPLE USAGE:

recycleIt.exe C:\temp\example.txt /quit

NOTE: You need to add the "/quit" or it will pop a window that stays open. This could be problematic for headless console sessions.