I'm relatively certain that there is no Qt API that wraps this for all supported platforms. That means, unfortunately, that you will have to write platform-specific code.
I don't know anything about where/how Linux distributions store deleted files, and I imagine that it probably varies depending on which file manager you're using. I believe that moving files to a ~/.Trash
folder is the standard way of doing it, but I'm not sure if this is reliable. For example, in the case of files stored on external volumes.
Things are a bit easier on Mac OS X, where there is a supported API to do this: FSMoveObjectToTrashSync
, provided by Core Services. At least, that's how I remember you're supposed to do it. The documentation claims that this method is now deprecated in OS X 10.8. I have no idea what the recommended alternative is.
As a Windows programmer, I think that platform is much easier. :-) The basic solution is to call the SHFileOperation
function:
#include <Windows.h> // general Windows header file
#include <ShellAPI.h> // for shell functions, like SHFileOperation
#include <string> // (or use QString)
void RecycleFileOnWindows()
{
std::wstring path = L"C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Documents\\deleteme.txt";
path.append(1, L'\0'); // path string must be double nul-terminated
SHFILEOPSTRUCT shfos = {};
shfos.hwnd = nullptr; // handle to window that will own generated windows, if applicable
shfos.wFunc = FO_DELETE;
shfos.pFrom = path.c_str();
shfos.pTo = nullptr; // not used for deletion operations
shfos.fFlags = FOF_ALLOWUNDO; // use the recycle bin
const int retVal = SHFileOperation(&shfos);
if (retVal != 0)
{
// The operation failed...
if (shfos.fAnyOperationsAborted)
{
// ...but that's because the user canceled.
MessageBox(nullptr, L"Operation was canceled", nullptr, MB_OK | MB_ICONINFORMATION);
}
else
{
// ...for one of the other reasons given in the documentation.
MessageBox(nullptr, L"Operation failed", nullptr, MB_OK | MB_ICONERROR);
}
}
}
There are also flags that you can set to customize confirmation, error reporting, and other behavior. The linked documentation contains all the details you need to build upon this basic example.
On Windows Vista and later, the SHFileOperation
function has been superseded by the methods provided by the IFileOperation
interface. If you're targeting only these later versions of Windows, you should prefer to use this interface. Otherwise, SHFileOperation
will continue to work fine.