Best practices to alias the rm command and make it safer

Question

Some time ago I erroneously deleted my home folder because I ran a rm -rf * on the wrong terminal, whose working directory was the home folder!

I wish I had an alias for the rm command, but it was not the case.

Now, I am planning to make a script as an alias for rm.

Do you have any best practice to suggest?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you want a customized rm, don't call it rm but a name of yours, myrm, delete or whatever.

The rm='rm -i' alias is an horror because after a while using it, you will expect rm to prompt you by default before removing files. Of course, one day you'll run it with an account that hasn't that alias set and before you understand what's going on, it is too late.

In any case, a good way to be prepared for file loss or corruption is doing backups.

A fast alternative that will protect you against accidental file deletion or overwriting is using a file system that support unlimited snapshots like ZFS. If frequent snapshots are done automatically, you can recover the files at the state they were during the last snapshot before the incident.  

Answer 2

If you want save aliases, but don't want to risk getting used to the commands working differently on your system than on others, you can to disable rm like this

alias rm='echo "rm is disabled, use remove or trash or /bin/rm instead."'

Then you can create your own safe alias, e.g.

alias remove='/bin/rm -irv'

or use trash instead.

Answer 3

You could try using trash instead. Just remember to empty it once in a while...

Answer 4

Without having to change everyones profile, what you can do is place file called -i in the directory.

# touch -- -i
# ll
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root users  0 Jan 26 19:24 files
drwxr-xr-x 2 root users 40 Jan 26 19:24 folder_of_power
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   0 Jan 26 19:25 -i
-rw-r--r-- 1 root users  0 Jan 26 19:24 important
-rw-r--r-- 1 root users  0 Jan 26 19:24 very
# rm -rf *
rm: remove regular empty file `files'? 

Answer 5

I use the following script.

#!/bin/sh

trash=$HOME/tmp
mv "$@" $trash
nohup find "$trash" -type f -atime +7 -exec /bin/rm '{}' \; 2>&1 &

If you accidentally delete a file, recover it from the $HOME/tmp.

The script moves deleted files to a tmp directory and deletes them next time the delete script is run if the access time is 7 days later (semi-automated cleanup of the $HOME/tmp directory).

Answer 6

This bash code adds the function rm to your ~/.bash_profile configuration file. After running this, if you write rm file, you will move that file to /tmp

cat << EOF >> ~/.bash_profile
rm () {
  mv $1 /tmp
}
EOF

Answer 7

In your profile,

alias rm="rm -i"

Answer 8

A script called d, with contents mv $* /tmp.

edit: This is a bad idea; see below. I currently have alias d='mv -t /tmp' in my .profile instead.