I've learned about a nice litle cli utitliy: rmw
rmw (ReMove to Waste) is a safe-remove utility for the command line.
It can move and restore files to and from directories specified in a configuration file, and can also be integrated with your regular desktop trash folder (if your desktop environment uses the FreeDesktop.org Trash specification).
—src: remove-to-waste.info
The utitliy is written in C, open source, and has a GNU GPLv3 License.
And.It.Just.Works.
On first usage it creats a default configuration file at ~/.config/rmwrc
along w/ a default waste directory structure at ~/.local/share/Waste
.
To make it work w/ my GNOME desktop (on Debian Buster) I only hat to adjust the path to the waste directory like so:
# ~/.config/rmwrc
WASTE = $HOME/.local/share/Trash
I can now delete remove a file to trash waste like so:
rmw some-file-to-be-deleted.txt
To ultimately purge the file, I just need to Empty Trash from GNOME Files app, which I do anyway 🤞.