[R] [Rd] R CMD build wiped my computer

[Marc Schwartz]

On Jul 28, 2010, at 3:18 PM, Bos, Roger wrote:

> Ubuntu also uses ~ as a backup file syntax, but Ubuntu has a trash can
> where deleted files are located, so it would be easy to restore them.  I
> would be surprised if Fedora didn't also have a trash can. 

<snip>

Roger,

It does, but that is only if you use GUI based file deletion functionality with applications (eg. file managers) that support the trash can folder for the desktop environment that you are using (eg. GNOME, KDE, XFCE, etc.). In that case, the files are moved to the trash can folder, rather than deleting them from the source location.

In recent years, on Linux, that has been standardized using the freedesktop.org standards, so that most popular GUI based applications use the same locations for common functionality. Before that, differing environments had the trash can folder in different locations, such as ~/.Trash or elsewhere within the user's folder tree. So, if you happened to use more then one desktop environment, or say used a KDE application (eg. Konqueror) from within GNOME, you could have more than one trash can on your system.

If you remove files via the CLI (eg. a shell script), they don't go into the trash can folder. They are just deleted.

Regards,

Marc