Why do I sometimes get repeatedly prompted with ">" in the terminal?

Question

Alright, when I run certain commands the wrong way, (misspelled, etc.) The terminal outputs this: > instead of computername:workingfolder username$, and when I type enter it goes like this:

>

>

>

That would be if I pressed enter 3 times.

Answer 1

> is the default continuation prompt.That is what you will see if what you entered before had unbalanced quote marks.

As an example, type a single quote on the command line followed by a few enter keys:

$ '
> 
> 
> 

The continuation prompts will occur until you either

• (a) complete the command with a closing quote mark

  or

• (b) type Ctrl+D to finish input, at which point the shell will respond with an error message about the unbalanced quotes,

  or

• (c) type Ctrl+C which will abort the command that you were entering.

How this is useful

Sometime, you may want to enter a string which contains embedded new lines. You can do that as follows:

$ paragraph='first line
> second line
> third line
> end'

Now, when we display that shell variable, you can see that the prompts have disappeared but the newlines are retained:

$ echo "$paragraph"
first line
second line
third line
end

Answer 2

That will happen if you have an unclosed quote in your command. That's something like:

$ echo "test here
>
>
...

You can exit that mode by closing the quote (write a " or ', or whatever your open quote is). It could also be a brace-delimited block, a partially-complete for-do or while-do loop, or certain other constructs. You can also press Ctrl-C to cancel this command (then press Up to revise it).

This can sometimes happen without an obvious missing quote when parameter or history expansions occur where you didn't expect them.

---

The > is your PS2 ("secondary prompt") value. You can change that to something else to remind you what's happened:

PS2="Unclosed >"

in your .bashrc will make it print Unclosed > at the start of each line instead.

Answer 3

In addition to the other answers, you also get the continuation prompt when you type a \ as the last character on a line.

Answer 4

The answer lies in this cryptic mention in the Bash Reference Manual:

5.1 Bourne Shell Variables

[...]

• PS1: The primary prompt string. The default value is ‘\s-\v\$’. See Printing a Prompt, for the complete list of escape sequences that are expanded before PS1 is displayed.
• PS2: The secondary prompt string. The default value is ‘>’.

… followed by:

6.3.3 Interactive Shell Behavior

3. Bash expands and displays PS1 before reading the first line of a command, and expands and displays PS2 before reading the second and subsequent lines of a multi-line command.

So, the > prompt appears if you press Enter and Bash determines that the command is incomplete. That could be because:

• The character before the newline is a \, which is treated as a line continuation.
• You have an incomplete string (mismatched quotes or unterminated here-doc) or some other mismatched delimiters, such as $(), (), ``.
• You have started a function definition, a for loop, a while loop, or a case.

If you are seeing the secondary prompt due to an unintentional typing error, hit ControlC to return to the primary prompt.

Answer 5

The shell waiting for you to complete the command. Maybe there's a unclosed quote somewhere or it thinks you are starting a "for" loop and waits for the user to finish typing