Scoroncocolo

Force Terminal to Send Files to Trash

The Terminal/Command Line loves to permanently delete things and the only delete trick it knows is to destroy things with the rm (remove) command and it doesn't have a command to move things to your Trash folder where they're not yet forever annihilated but we can trick it into doing just that

One of the neatest Terminal tricks is using the mv (move) command to move files to your Trash folder as in mv something.png ~/.Trash but if you try to do that you will get a "Permission denied" or "Operation not permitted" output from the Terminal so here's how to get around that

On a Mac your Trash Folder lives at /Users/YourName/.Trash which can be abbreviated to ~/.Trash but it is a dot file (or dot folder) and Mac hides all files and folders whose names begin with dots (.) so if you cd to your Home directory where it lives and run ls or ls -l you won't find it but if you run ls -la you will find it because the a flag in that command instructs the Terminal to show all files even the hidden dot files

If go there and try to do anything with the .Trash Directory like view its contents using the ls -la command the Terminal will probably output: Permission denied or Operation not permitted

In order to resolve this you must grant Full Disk Access to your Terminal to interact with this particular dot file in your macOS system settings

To do that go to System Settings and under Privacy & Security find and click on Full Disk Access now find Terminal in the list and toggle it to on then a prompt will appear stating you need to Quit and re-open your Terminal so click Quit & Reopen and now Bam! you will have access to your Trash folder in the Terminal

So now you can go to your .Trash Folder at /Users/YourName/.Trash or better yet type ~/.Trash into the command line and you will see /Users/YourName/.Trash in your prompt so type ls -la to view its contents or run echo $PATH to have the Terminal print out its full, complete and very long path

Now you can go to the the Directory/Folder containing the file to be moved to the Trash and type mv FileToBeMoved.txt ~/.Trash and hit Enter and Bam!

You're probably thinking "Well that's a lot of trouble" and you're right it is a lot of trouble so here comes the Fish Trick part

What if we had an easy to type variable to to stand for the path to our Trash folder

Creating variables in the Fish shell

In the Fish Shell there are two excellent ways to make shortcuts to directories:

One way is to use a variable: Just type set -Ux docs /Users/yourname/Documents and hit your Enter key and it's done

To use it type $docs then the Enter key and the Terminal will jump to your Documents Directory

Another way is to use a function: Type function docs then hit your Enter key and then type cd /Users/yourname/Documents and hit Enter again and finally type end and hit Enter

The terminal prompt should now be blinking as normal but you have one more hoop to jump through to setup this function so type funcsave docs and hit Enter and your'e done

The terminal should output: funcsave: wrote /Users/yourname/.config/fish/functions/s.fish which indicates the function was properly set up

Now to jump to your Documents folder you no longer have to use the dollar sign typing $docs you only have to type docs and Bam! Your'e there

So do you need both? I'd say yes and here's why: Using the function shortcut docs is easier than constantly typing $docs and it works great for moving between directories and such but it won't work in a command to copy, move of delete a file

For instance if you ran this mv myfile.txt docs instead of moving the file to your Documents folder as expected, Terminal would simple rename it from myfile.txt to docs because the terminal doesn't recognize the final argument of the command to mean a location

But if you use the variable $docs instead of the function docs as in mv myfile.txt $docs the file will be moved to your Documents folder because the terminal recognizes $docs as a directory

More About Variables

To see a list off all of the variables in your fish shell run set --universal --names and yes there needs to be two dashes before both universal and names

To see a list of the functions you have created you will need to view them in either the Nano or Vim editor by typing this vim ~/.config/fish/functions/ or nano ~/.config/fish/functions/

If you have created some variables whose names you would like to change that's easy to do

Let's say you have named your variables $dir1, $dir2, $dir3 and so on and you have to keep referring to your notes to remember which shortcut leads to which Directory and you want to change $dir1 to $desktop

Here's how to do that: type set -g desktop $dir1 (the g flag stands for global variable) and then immediately after you've done that run this to erase the old variable from fish.config completely set -e dir1 (the e flag stands for Erase)

To quickly check that the change was made type this echo $desktop and you should see the path to your Desktop

Access Your Thumb Drive

Type cd /Volumes and press Enter to navigate to the drives directory

Type ls and press Enter to see a list of connected drives and you should see Macintosh HD which is your hard drive of course along with your Time Machines both local and external along with whatever thumb drives you have plugged into your Mac

You can access your thumb drive by typing cd "YourDriveName" (replace YourDriveName with the exact name of your drive

To make a Variable shortcut to your thumb drive hold your ⌥ opt/alt key while r-clicking your thumb drive's icon on your Mac Desktop and click on Copy (yourDrice) as Pathname then paste that as the path/of/thumbdrive when using the Terminal command set -Ux thumb path/of/thumbdrive

If you are already working inside a folder and want to copy its exact path: pwd | pbcopy

If you are looking at a file in your current folder and want its full, absolute path copied: realpath filename.ext | pbcopy

If you want to check what is currently on your clipboard without leaving Terminal, type: pbpaste

To see the contents of your Trash folder ls -la ~/.Trash

To delete everything inside your Trash folder rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

To find a file run find ~ -name "your-file-name.jpg" and your Terminal will show you the the full path of ever instance of that file on your machine

pbpaste > filename.txt Replace filename.txt with your desired file name. This command grabs whatever text is currently in your clipboard and writes it directly into the file. If the file doesn't exist, it will be created automatically. If you want to add what is on your clipboard to the end of an existing file without overwriting its current contents, use >> instead of > pbpaste >> filename.txt

To easily verify that your text was saved correctly, you can output the file's contents back into your terminal by typing cat filename.txt

More Fish Tricks

You can type open . to open the current Directory in a Finder window

Typing cal into your terminal prints a clean, text-based calendar for the current month

Instead of typing out long file paths, type cd (with a space) and then drag a folder from your Finder window directly into the Terminal window. Press Enter to go straight to that folder in your Terminal

You can use the command pwd | pbcopy to copy the complete path of the current Directory onto your clipboard

Terminal Commands Mentioned on these Pages

• prevd (Alt+left arrow): takes you to the previous directory
• nextd (Alt+right arrow): takes you to the next directory
• dirh (Alt+d): shows a list of the recently visited directories
• cdh: allows you to quickly jump to any recently visited directory using letter or number shortcuts
• rm: Removes/deletes a file permanently
• mv: Moves a file/Folder from one location to another; also renames files (oldname newname)
• ls: Lists files in current Directory; ls -l long listls -la show dot files
• pwd | pbcopy: pwd prints your current directory path, and the pipe (|) sends that text straight to your clipboard instead of printing it on the screen
• realpath filename.ext | pbcopy: copy the full, absolute path of a file in the current folder to your clipboard
• pbpaste: Echos on the Terminal screen whatever is on your clipboard
• pbpaste > file.txt: Writes whatever is on your clipboard onto the file even creates if it doesn't exist
• pbpaste >> file.txt: Writes whatever is on your clipboard beneath what is already there
• ls -la ~/.Trash: Lists content of your Trash Folder
• find ~ -name "your-file-name.jpg": Finds a file and echos its path
• cat filename.txt: Echos content of specified file
• cal: Echos the current month's calendar

While all of these Fish Tricks will work in the Fish Shell some but not all will work in other shells as well

To quickly move to your Home Directory type cd and the symbol that is called tilde or cd ~

To move quickly to the root directory type cd /

cd .. to go to the parent of your current folder
cd ~ or just cd to jump back to your user’s home directory
cd / to go to the very top of your file system
cd ../.. to move up two levels
cd ../../.. to jump up three levels from your current location

• mkdir Data Makes a new, empty folder/directory named Data
• touch dog.txt Creates a new empty file named dog.txt
• pwd prints the path of the directory you are currently in
• ls lists all files in the current directory/folder
  • ls -a list all files including hidden files
  • ls -l long listing of all files showing owner, size and time last edited
  • ls -R Recursive: Lists everything in the current folder and all subfolders
  • ls .. list the contents of the parent directory one level above
• mv oldname.txt newname.txt renames files
• rm filename.txt (remove) permanetly deletes files (caution there be dragons)    there is no cmd + Z or undo
• rm -r DeadFolder remove/delete a directory/folder and all of its contents (files and sub-directories) permenatly
• cat AnyFile.txt prints out the entire text of the file
• head AnyFile.txt prints the first 10 lines of specified file
• tail AnyFile.txt prints the last 10 lines of specified file
• echo "Arf! Arf!" > dog.txt replaces any existing text with Arf Arf
• echo "Arf! Arf! Arf!" >> dog.txt adds text below existing text on dog.txt
• cp copies files or folders from one location to another
• say "Everything not forbidden is compulsory" hear your machine speak to you
• say -f filename.txt Reads the contents of a specific text file aloud
• history lists a history of your last 16 (in ZSH/macOS) commands
• history 5 lists your last 5 commands (specify any number you want) and you can use your up arrow to bring them to the command prompt
• open -a "Sublime Text" dog.txt will open the file in Sublime Text (substitute your code editor) if it is installed on your machine
• Command + K Clears the console's screen
• Control + Z to pause a process and put it in the background; you can resume it later with the fg command

Here's a link to my Command Line page

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