Deleting usually means the act of removing files from their former locations on the system.
In Ubuntu a file (directories are files too) may be deleted:
- through the GUI, for example by pressing the delete key when the icon is selected or by clicking a button in a context menu. This causes the file to be sent to a location called Trash, where it will remain until Trash is "emptied"
- by a CLI method, such as using the
rm(remove) command, using the-deleteoption tofind, overwriting a file withmv(move) and so on. There is no Trash or undelete for these methods, which clear the inode associated with the file. Although the file is still present on the disk, the operation cannot be reversed and the data may not be fully recoverable.
