I think what you're saying is true and I am also seeing the pros and cons. Do we really need a new command on the same level as mv, cp, and rm? We don't want to add bloat but we also want some kind of solution.

I wonder if the problem is not cultural or if there just isn't a technical solution we can agree on. mindslight mentioned wipe(1), but i don't think it's aligned with the same goal in mind, and it seems to be tied down with many complications (http://wipe.sourceforge.net/).

I somewhat agree with what you say, but: "to leave it up to end-users to build their own solutions"? Is that optimism, naïvety, or am I overlooking a dose of sarcasm?

Ha, well not sarcasm. I guess I assume that if you are working in Unix you know enough (or can learn) to create a script to handle this for you. Of course that doesn't prevent somebody from running rm, but it does at least put the brunt of the blame on the person who used rm anyway, despite the admins advising against it in favor of the archiving script.

I guess the basic question is- should users be entrusted to permanently delete anything? rm is probably my third or fourth most-used commands because it is so fast and easy. It does exactly what it should- get rid of shit you don't need anymore, and very quickly. For example, I use templates to generate web applications and when I test new templates I will frequently want to get rid of the auto-generated one I just created. Without rm this would be an incredible pain in the ass or at least take more time and storage than it should. I like keeping the core strictly utilitarian and leaving the layers of safety to be built by bureaucracies after it has shipped.