libtrashcan is a cross-platform C library for moving files and directories to the trashcan.

Build Status	Operating System
	Linux
	FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD
	Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and newer
	macOS

When you're implementing user interaction for viewing, selecting, loading and creating files you may also want to offer the functionality to delete files. Using POSIX specified functions for cross-platform development may seem sensible, however remove() and rmdir() happen to permanently delete files and directories. This is likely not the behavior a user of your program would anticipate even more so if there aren't any warnings. In order to ease development of cross-platform C applications this library implements the soft delete functionality for you. It also helps with operating systems where the C interface isn't well documented, like for instance with Windows' IFileOperation interface.

For Linux and *BSD the library implements the FreeDesktop.org trash specification v1.0. On Windows our implementation uses the IFileOperation interface and also handles COM initialization. MacOS already has a simple way to trash files using the NSFileManager which is wrapped in a function as well.

The function int trashcan_soft_delete(const char *path) is provided on all platforms. It takes a path to a file or directory, tries to move it to the trashcan and returns a status code. Additional platform dependent functions with different signatures may be provided, e.g. to control COM initialization on Windows. The complete API is documented in the trashcan.h file. For an example application that uses libtrashcan take a look at example.c.

All functions for soft deletion return a status code which can be converted into a status message using const char* trashcan_status_msg(int status_code). Any status code other than zero means that an error occured.

In order to use libtrashcan you need to include trashcan.h in your source code, build and link the library. An example projects is provided that shows how to do that using CMake. Using CMake is not a requirement for your project you can use any build tools you prefer. If you build your own application on macOS and don't use our provided CMakeLists.txt then you need to link and include the header files of CoreFoundation and Cocoa as well.

The example project is a CLI application that takes a path to a file or directory as argument and tries to move it to the trash. It can be build by executing the following commands on your terminal/shell/command line if you have CMake and a compiler is installed:

mkdir build
cd ./build
cmake ..
cmake --build . --config Release

Libtrashcan is licensed under the MIT License. This license is compatible with GPL.

The library is in early development and making sure that it reaches a mature state is a core goal. If you'd like to contribute check the issue tracker or submit pull requests for improvements. In particular I'd be grateful for contributions regarding:

• Identifying cross-platform issues
• Stability / Reliability
• Security