"rm -i" alias equivalent on Cygwin/Windows Command Line

Question

I'm using Windows command prompt with Cygwin. Is it possible to define a bash like alias i.e. alias rm='rm -i' to prevent accidental damage from rm command? (Other than using doskey)

Update : All the wise downvoters, please read carefully despite the question being concise, I "want" to use Windows command prompt, not bash etc. & I want to use Cygwin commands with it.

Answer 1

If you don't want to use doskey, you can create a batch file named rm.bat with the following content

C:\cygwin\bin\rm.exe -i %*

Change the cygwin path above according to your environment, then put rm.bat under %SystemRoot%\system32\ or any path in %PATH% environment variable.

This solution will make rm survived after a reboot.

Example

C:\>rm AUTOEXEC.BAT CONFIG.SYS

C:\>c:\cygwin\bin\rm -i AUTOEXEC.BAT CONFIG.SYS
/usr/bin/rm: remove regular empty file `AUTOEXEC.BAT'? n
/usr/bin/rm: remove regular empty file `CONFIG.SYS'? n

You can suppress command echoing by insert @ in front of the command line: @C:\cygwin\bin\rm.exe -i %*.

Answer 2

The equivalent of a bash alias in a GNU/Linux environment is the exact same bash alias in Cygwin environment. This would not apply if the alias involved a command that interacts with the kernel, which are generally not present in Cygwin.

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The Cygwin command prompt in Windows runs bash. Your question title is confusing because it asks for aliases in Cygwin (I changed it). The way to define aliases in the native windows shell (cmd) is doskeys, and the equivalent argument of rm -i (interactive) for the windows del command is /P (prompt for confirmation).

So you could use:

doskey rm=del /P $* 

or

doskey rm=C:\cygwin\bin\rm.exe -i $*

Why is that not satisfactory? What are the benefits of using something other than doskey?