hasteinmetz / remove-guard

Function to add to .bashrc or .bash_profile file to protect against accidental deletions

remove-guard

Ask first for confirmation whenever rm -r is called in a bash shell session. The repository consists of a function to add to your .bashrc or .bash_profile file.

Set up

Place the remove function in the rm_alias file in your .bashrc or .bash_profile file. Add an alias for remove (such as rmv) function to the .bashrc file with alias rmv='remove'.

Recommeded: remove rm functionality

To add additional guardrails and ensure that you cannot use the rm command, add the following function to your .bashrc or .bash_profile file:

remover() {
    echo "Use rmv instead command"
}

alias rm='remover'

To reenable rm, enter the command unalias rm.

How it works

When rmv -r is called, it displays the first few subdirectories that would be deleted by the standard rm -r command. It does not list all directories, so you still need to be careful.

Example:

rmv -r docs

*** Entered: rmv -r docs
*** Subdirectories include:
    >>> docs
    >>> docs/_includes
    >>> docs/academics
    >>> docs/quiz
    >>> docs/content
    >>> docs/_layouts
    >>> ...
*** Are you sure? [Y/n]:

The primary goal of rmv -r is to reduce keyboard input errors (for instance, accidentally hitting enter after scrolling through previous commands) or "muscle memory" errors that might occur when deleting repositories. I decided to write this code after discovering that there was no good solutions to efficiently and carefully delete repositories using standard bash commands; either you need to remove each file separately or remove a directory without any confirmation. rmv -r falls somewhere in between these two options, asking for confirmation before deleting.