SRM

SRM (Smarter rm) is born as an alternative to rm (the linux command used to remove files).. Its goal is to be a SMARTER and SAFER version of it.

How?

SRM is built with cleanliness in mind. it uses a safe and intuitive approach to recover and protect your files.

/home/USER/.trash/
├── files
│   ├── 7ea875ac-aba3-404e-8801-ec0255001e5c.txt
│   ├── 9845e262-ade4-4c3a-a7bc-24c77275bd87.py
│   ├── adb0ebf0-fb34-4fa5-8d43-923e5bdd8aff.md
│   ├── ec9d95e2-d2e9-490a-bf8e-e2fd9ae43461.cpp
│   └── fa6c6b94-5fa1-4c36-8978-e96ce3953cf3.js
└── metadata
    ├── 7ea875ac-aba3-404e-8801-ec0255001e5c.json
    ├── 9845e262-ade4-4c3a-a7bc-24c77275bd87.json
    ├── adb0ebf0-fb34-4fa5-8d43-923e5bdd8aff.json
    ├── b826819e-4e2c-46f1-b90f-430c143541c1.json
    ├── ec9d95e2-d2e9-490a-bf8e-e2fd9ae43461.json
    └── fa6c6b94-5fa1-4c36-8978-e96ce3953cf3.json

What it'll do is move the deleted file into the directory ~/.trash/files, assign it a UUID and create metadata about it in the ~/.trash/metadata directory.

The metadata will have a bunch of useful information SRM will then use to recover your file.

UUID ==> It's just the UUID. dest ==> The destination of the file og_path ==> The original path del_time ==> the time and date of the deletion of the file.

This is an example of the metadata.

{
"UUID": "7ea875ac-aba3-404e-8801-ec0255001e5c", 
"filename": "nutz.txt",
"dest": "/home/deez/.trash/files/7ea875ac-aba3-404e-8801-ec0255001e5c", 
"og_path": "/home/deez/projects/srm/nutz.txt", 
"del_time": "2026-03-04 22:42:47"
}

About it

SRM is built in python (ik, not the best for a tool like this, i might port it to c or cpp.), it was born as an app you run through the terminal (not a command, literally python3 srm.py ...) and then made into a CLI tool.

I started building it out of pure boredom and to get a python refresher, i just noticed it could become an amazing project, so, here i am writing the docs for it. :)).

I started writing docs for it pretty late actually, i've been working on the first version of srm for something like 3/4 days, so, yeah... whoops..

Devlog

ToDo

- Arguments

• clean ==> Delete ALL files in the ~/.trash/files directory -- done

  • clean (n) ==> delete files older than 'n' days. -- not done
  • clean xG ==> delete files larger than 'x' GB. -- not done
  • clean xM ==> delete files older than 'x' MB. -- not done

• recover ==> Recover a file from trash to it's original directory -- not done

  • recover (file) directory ==> Recover a file from the trash into a specified directory. -- not done

QoL

Sensible paths

I wanna introduce the recognition of sensible paths (e.g /, /home/user, /home/user/Documents, ...).

It'll work like this:

deez@nuts: srm /home/user
Are you sure you wanna delete /home/user? It's a sensible path. y/N

deez@nuts: y
Okay, your choice.

deez@nuts: n
Probably the best choice.

Risk levels example

Low risk

~/Downloads/tmp.txt

Medium risk

~/Documents/

High risk

/ ~/ /home

as you can already imagine, srm.py will be the main file, containing the parser (that thing that allows you to run srm with arguments.), while clean.py - list.py - recover.py will be the files that will contain the code to clean the trash folder, list the files (and metadata) in the trash folder and to recover the files.

I guess recover.py will be the hardest one to build, since i'll have to deal with original paths and stuff.. BUT, what i'm dealing with right now is: moving files to trash without losing their contents.. I don't know how to do that tbh.... (well, i do know, but im stubborn and wanna keep the idea of changing the file's name into a uuid, instead of just moving the file.) (I think i'll do this in two hours (i feel like i'll do most of it now and continue when i wake up tomorrow but u got the idea.).. Still no cpp porting, i don't think it'll be that useful, i'll do it when i'm bored of python i guess. ) --- in the end, i got into the doomscrolling abyss and went to sleep at 4am, doing almost nothing.....

BUT NOW i'm working on the configuration file!

# config.py

import os
from pathlib import Path


def init():
    
    home = os.path.expanduser("~")
    trash_dir = Path.home() / ".trash"
    trash_dir_files = trash_dir / "files"
    trash_dir_metadata = trash_dir / "metadata"
    
    trash_dir.mkdir(exist_ok=True)
    trash_dir_files.mkdir(exist_ok=True)
    trash_dir_metadata.mkdir(exist_ok=True)

    return home, trash_dir, trash_dir_files, trash_dir_metadata

Actual devlog..

9th March 2026 -- 00:02 am

I added the list feature, i admit i used a little bit of AI to help me out with it, i wouldn't have done it normally, but i know i couldn't have done it myself. What i did with AI is just printing nicely the files with all the heading and stuff, the logic is all mine.

9th March 2026 -- 07:07 pm

I added the recover feature, i gotta say i'm not sure about the code being the most clean and efficient but, it works! I'll probably check it out in a hour or so, i just need a little break. It wasn't that hard but, i did it in a public area and all the noise was KILLING me.

10th March 2026 -- 01:28 pm

I woke up an hour ago and i'm already up working on SRM. Probably i'm putting too much effort since it's a pretty simple tool but i gotta say it's pretty enjoyable. What i wanna work on now is perfecting the recovery feature since right now srm knows how to recover files simply based off of the name. I wanna add the ability to recover files based off of size, deletion time and type.