Thanks. That's true (and very neat - e.g. Emacs has a
delete-by-moving-to-trash variable that presumably works even from the
terminal). However command line programs should still adhere to the
conventions set by GUI desktops since those came first. It's great that
FreeDesktop has a clearly specified implementation.
To be fair, better operating systems had equivalents to the trash can long before GUI programs existed. For example, in the manual for TOPS-20, the DELETE command is described as "mark files for later erasure." But Unix became dominant, and many good ideas were lost in the process. </rant>