Silly question about bash

[the_servicer]

When I enter a single apostrophe on a command line, I get a greater than sign as output.

In other words, entering

'

yields the following

>

Why?

 

[Azrak]

Because bash is looking for the closing quote in the input and you hit Enter before inputting the second quote. The ">" is bash's way of saying "I'm looking for the rest of the command".

If you are trying to input a single quote on purpose, like entering the word "don't" on the command line, you'll need to escape the quote with a backslash: "don\'t" and bash won't try to go looking for a closing quote.

 

[the_servicer]

That's good information! Thanks.