While KDE and other desktop environments usually keep removed files in a trash directory, the command line program rm irreversibly deletes files. The tiny Python utility trash-cli may help here. It implements the Freedesktop trash specification and is therefore apt for Gnome and KDE. On Ubuntu, it can be installed from the package management:
sudo apt-get install trash-cli
The manpage in my version (0.12.7) is a little outdated, so I list the available programs here:
- trash, trash-put f – moves file or directory f to trash
- trash-empty [d] – empties the trash (optionally restricted to files that are older than d days)
- restore-trash – restores files that were originally located below the current directory
- trash-list – lists all files in the trash (trash-list | sort sorts the files according to date)