![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/mac-trash.png\" "\\"mac-trash\\"")
\nDeleting a file isn’t what you think it is.
\n
\nI suppose it’s pretty common knowledge how to zap a file out of existence: You click to select the file’s icon, then press the Delete key in Windows or Command+Delete on a Mac. Or you can be all graphical and drag the icon to the Recycle Bin or Trash. Simple.<\/p>\n
What happens next depends on the operating system.<\/p>\n
In Windows, the file is compressed and stored in a Recycle Bin archive. Information about the file’s folder location is also kept, so that it can be restored to its original spot later.<\/p>\n
On the Mac, the file is merely moved to the Trash folder.<\/p>\n
So a deleted file isn’t really deleted; it’s moved to another location, out of sight. This operation came about because early operating systems really did take efforts at removing the file; the end result of a file delete operation was that you couldn’t get the file back, no matter how hard you hit the computer’s monitor.<\/p>\n
Peter Norton made a fortune by crafting the first popular un-erase utility back in the early 1980s. Obviously people were hasty with deleting files and there was widespread need to get them back.<\/p>\n
Eventually the operating system developers caught on, and today you have things like the Recycle Bin or Trash.<\/p>\n
(Poor Peter lost his monopoly when DOS gained an For those time when you want to really<\/em> delete a file, you can use special file-deleting commands. In Windows, it’s Shift-Delete, which zaps a file and doesn’t put it into the Recycle Bin for recovery.<\/p>\n The Mac doesn’t seem to have a permanent delete command specifically. You can, however, choose the option Secure Empty Trash from the Finder menu, which utterly zaps deleted files.<\/p>\n Now you can understand how deleting a file doesn’t really delete it. In fact, deleting a file in the old days didn’t really delete it, either. That secret was how Norton was able to work his magic in the un-erase program. I’ll describe more of the behind-the-scenes part of deleting a file in Wednesday’s blog post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Deleting a file isn’t what you think it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}UNDELETE<\/code> command.)<\/p>\n