What's the difference between rm and empty trash?

Question

If I put a file in the trash and "empty trash", is that the same as doing rm file?

I understand that there are questions here asking about (e.g. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]), but no answer directly pertains to the difference in process (if there is one).

Answer 1

Yes, rm removes the file as does moving it to trash and then emptying the trash. One nice thing about moving files to Trash is that it gives you a little longer to decide if you really want to delete them. rm will remove immediately.

Answer 2

If I put a file in the trash and "empty trash", is that the same as doing rm file?

Effectively yes, although the details may vary under the hood. In both cases, the file can no longer be recovered except under certain circumstances^{1, 2, 3, 4}, or perhaps using forensic data recovery techniques.

That said, I'd like to offer this as an adjunct:

I've always liked the concept of "moving to trash" because it gives you a second chance. When I started with Unix systems, I was always nervous about using rm... still am in fact.

And so I was very pleased when I found the trash utility for macOS by dabrahams. There was an extensive discussion here on moving files to the Trash folder from the command line, and IMHO, this one was the best.

Old habits die hard, and so I created an alias - if I enter rm, trash is called. If I'm feeling cocky, and really wish to rm - I have another alias for that.