Re: what is > ?

[will trillich <will@serensoft.com>]

On Fri, Dec 01, 2000 at 11:08:49PM -0500, Harry Henry Gebel wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 01, 2000 at 07:41:01PM -0700, cls-c/s wrote:
> > in bash, i sometimes hit ' at the end of a command and i then get > on the next line.  what does > do?
> 
> > bt@cls411:~$ top'
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > bt@cls411:~$ exit
> 
> The > prompt is bash's way of telling you that you haven't finished typing
> in a command yet. When you typed the single quote you tell bash that you
> are starting to type an argument and that characters that normally have
> special meanings such as *, $, the space, and the carriage return, no
> longer have those special meanings. Since the carriage return no longer has
> it's special meaning (to tell bash you are done typing a command) bash just
> interprets it as one more character to put into that argument. It will stay
> in this mode until you type another single quote. The single quote retains
> it's special meaning because otherwise you would have no way to stop typing
> the argument, the backslash retains it's special meaning in case you have
> to insert a single quote character into the argument. You can also still
> abort the command with CTRL-C .

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