The danger of aliasing the command itself (the bare 'rm') is that you come to count on the safety of the alias. Then you work one day on a friend's or coworker'

The danger of aliasing the command itself (the bare 'rm') is that you come to count on the safety of the alias. Then you work one day on a friend's or coworker's machine and...BOOM. What I do instead is make a nearby (and simple) alias. For example: rmi='rm -i'