Trashcans have followed me around from platform to platform since my first GUI experience with MacIntosh system 7. I was alarmed upon my first encounter. Up until then, the 'delete' key was the Key Of Consequence, not to be frobbed lightly. Delete was forever. Everybody apparently understood that. Then I killed a file on the Mac, and this trashcan icon which I had previously ignored suddenly bulged. I clicked the trashcan and lo, the file lived still! I had to delete it - again!!! I immediately said to myself, "That's the stupidest damn thing I've ever seen anybody put on a computer! Has Apple lost its mind?"
Oh well, the fad couldn't possibly last. After all, cars don't make you step on the brake twice to stop them, doors don't make you turn the handle twice to open them, elevators don't make you push the button twice... logically, users would shun this obvious maldesign!
They didn't.
I fled to Windows, and the trashcans followed me there under the alias of Recycle Bin, and from there on out, I found them on every other system I ventured to.
The standard method: Delete file. "are you sure you want to delete blah blah blah?" [failsafe one] it's caught in the recycle bin [failsafe two] open the recycle bin and click delete again [failsafe three] "are you sure you want to empty the recycle bin?" [failsafe four]. Oh, and let's not count the systems where it actually only erases the first byte of the file so it can be undeleted, or the forensic utilities which crime labs use to recover deleted data, or the fact that the data isn't truly erased until you've written over the hard drive sector with random bytes about five times. Oh, and of course, making sure I have the right file permissions for system files. [failsafe five]. And assuming that it isn't part of a backup [failsafe six]. And assuming that there's no copy of it in an archive, RAID, or another computer [failsafe seven].
I finally fled to Linux and heaved a sigh of relief - only to see Gnome and KDE throw the trashcans back at me. Currently, I'm hiding from the Invasion of the Trashcan Zombies on Fluxbox, which puts no desktop icons up at all, and I delete files only using the 'rm' command or the XFM file manager or Emacs 'dired' mode. Even these last two waste time asking "Are you sure?"
I have a place to hide for now, but I just know the Trashcan Cartel is lobbying Washington D.C. to make trashcans mandatory on every window manager and desktop environment. You won't even be able to get to a console without this little ASCII trashcan in the corner and a label "Do not remove under penalty of Divine wrath!" and if you hack it out of the code, alarms go off and your computer case opens up and a fiery death ray smokes you to cinders. They're working on a command-line trashcan utility right now. Like we need a special helper to access ~/.[Tt]rash.
This is what it's like to live in a world where so few people pay attention, that you're no longer allowed to gain any benefit from paying attention. Like Harrison Bergeron, I am to be chained to a trashcan for the rest of my life, punished for my diligence by making me delete everything twice - perhaps even three or four times just to show me who's boss. I can't just have a computer that follows my command without questioning my judgment, can I? Who do I think I am?
Look, if you're that worried about accidentally deleting files that you're going to need, then just put in a file-system mechanism where all deleted files are held in a 24-hour limbo before they're gone for good. OK?
These days, hard drive space isn't the issue with wanting to delete files so much as being neat and organized is. Nobody in the present time even thinks of selecting delete on a menu until the file is like a decade old and growing mold and they're already dead sure that they never want to see it again.
I, for one, have NEVER - in 20 years deleted a single, solitary byte of data without being absolutely, positively, irrevocably, F-ing-damn SURE that I wanted it gone. Dead; not recycled, not cached, but DEAD. That is why it is called "delete". Delete, verb, "Describes the action of discarding data from memory or storage.", says the dictionary.
But I have wasted something like a total of six years of that time answering "DUH ARE YOU SURE?" dialogs, flushing trashcans, telling the trashcans "yes, I'm sure!".
"Yeah, really, I'm sure that I'm sure!"
"Yes, I'm still sure!"
"Yes, computer, I meant it that time, too!"
Can I just sign a waiver somewhere and have it on file? "I testify that I intend to be sure of every command I give a computer for the rest of my life." signed, notarized, witnessed, filed with the Supreme Court... what. does. it. take?
I've never deleted a file accidentally... but I have spent another collective six years fooling with 10 different systems to find the Top Secret Classified Magic Spell (always different for every program, always undocumented, always arcane) to turn off confirmation dialogs, make the system delete files directly, and take the stupid trashcan icon off of my desktop, for each individual program on the system. Frequently, for most programs there is no setting in the preferences dialogs - I have to go into the code. In some sixteen different programming languages. For every computer, every time I install a new system on one. Even the default ~/.bashrc on most systems has the '-i' for interactive mode as an alias for 'rm'. There is never a convenient, standard, one-switch-to-do-it-all place I can turn all trashcans and confirmations off forever.
Obviously, I must be stark barking mad. I will have to be quarantined under a glass dome until a crack CSI team isolates the gene in my DNA that fools my brain into thinking it should expect a key on my keyboard to do what it says on the key. In the end, I will be in my padded cell and my straight-jacket, singing, "Every fiiiiile is saaaa-cred! Every fiiiiile is great! When a fiiiiile's deleeee-ted, God gets quite ir-aaaaaate!"
Update: Thank all of you very much for posting all the different tricks to bypass trashcans and disable confirmations in all the different programs. Even though I knew all that by now, it will at least help others who stumble on this thread from searches looking for a specific system.
But that's not the point; the point is, in fact, that if we're all going to adopt the confirmation/trashcan standard, then it should in fact be a standard. Part of the file system, for instance, instead of making each of the dozens of file manager utilities hatch their own scheme. Then there could also be a central control by which you could turn on/off that part of the system or set controls for it.
/dev/limbo, say. If there was a standard part of all Unix file systems that automatically - silently and transparently - moved all deleted files to that directory to hold in impound for 24 hours or whatever you set the cron job for. Then everybody has a 'second chance' to save accidentally deleted files, and the system doesn't make the user do any extra work to avoid it. For crazy people like me, I could softlink it to /dev/null and in one stroke fix it for everything, regardless if I'm using Gnome or KDE or XFCE or whatever. Do I make sense?
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Comments:
Still, a 'holding period' is no bad thing; and on my Mac, I have an app called Hazel which does indeed automatically empties the trash after a given amount of time. I'm sure there's other ways, but it suits me. Most importantly: if I don't regret deleting the file in 24-hours (rare but possible) it should be cast into the abyss. No question.
And there are utilities in Linux and Windows (I can't remember if there's one in Mac, too) to delete immediately (bypassing the trash).
I've personally found the trash useful, because there are files I want to delete, but I like to give myself a bit of buffer in case I do need that file later. And, no, using photorec or forensic utilities isn't even worth mentioning, as those are extremely time consuming. I just want a quick restore option.
It doesn't, however, make sense to have a confirmation before sending to the trash. It should just be delete or send to trash and a confirmation on delete or confirmation on emptying of the trash.
skip the trash can
It's not perfect, but I recently discovered that holding down shift and pushing the del key in Gnome saves you one failsafe. It asks you if you want to delete this file forever, skipping over the trash can and getting rid of it.
Most of the time when I'm dealing with non-image files I find it a lot more convenient to navigate through the filesystem in the CLI so I use rm -f and don't have to deal with all those failsafes.
I would like to suggest, however, a reason why the trash can came into existence with the GUIfied computer. It's quite tempting to blame catering to "stoopid" computer users who thought the CD-ROM was a cup holder. I think it actually has more of a subtle, useful reason for existing. It's actually pretty easy to miss the "Home", "End", etc keys and hit delete by accident. So if you had a file selected and there wasn't a trash can - then bye-bye file! With the CLI this never happens because you have to type rm and the filename.
So I think the trash can, recycle bin, etc actually serves a useful purpose. It's happened to me on at least one occasion.
Simple as that.
I'll empty the trash when I feel like it (and I spend so much time on the computer that I could spare 5 seconds emptying it).
At least though, in GNOME, it empties quickly.
I remember in Windows it would take a few minutes to delete the stuff in the trash can.
The one time I wished I didn't though, my I moved all of the files from the folder "Him" to "HIM" (band), then accidentally deleted "HIM", luckily I stopped it after it only deleted one album.
Now, concerning this matter, you will be happy, if you don't know it already, that KDE4 don't have a Trash by default. Of course, you still have do to shift+del the file but that can be easily changed on the "configure shortcuts" option.
And if I delete something I *shouldn't* have deleted...isn't that what a good backup system is for? (I still need to set one up, but backup systems are also for those times in which your computer just dies: a "Trash" icon isn't going to help you then!
