What is this terminal behavior called?

[Ranko Kohime]

Sometimes, when I type a command incorrectly, I get a "greater-than" prompt after hitting enter, instead of a normal error message.

What exactly is that? I suspect it's some type of command debugging console, but I have no idea what it's called to go searching for it, either in man or online.

For reference, I really only use the BASH shell, and this command causes the specific behavior I'm talking about:


for file in *; do fntsample -f "$file" -o ~/Downloads/fonts/"$file"

[Copper Bezel]

It's something related to the interactive mode for one of the commands you've run. The at command does this in normal operation. But I've had this happen, too, that I run a command that doesn't, to my knowledge, have an interactive mode but found myself at the weird little prompt and had to Ctrl+C out and try again.

[sanderj]

Sometimes, when I type a command incorrectly, I get a "greater-than" prompt after hitting enter, instead of a normal error message.

What exactly is that? I suspect it's some type of command debugging console, but I have no idea what it's called to go searching for it, either in man or online.

For reference, I really only use the BASH shell, and this command causes the specific behavior I'm talking about:


for file in *; do fntsample -f "$file" -o ~/Downloads/fonts/"$file"

It happens because your command is syntactically not finished / complete as the 'done' is not yet typed in. So:


for file in *z ; do echo 'hello' ; done

is a complete and won't give the prompt.

However,


for file in *z ; do echo 'hello'

will give the prompt, until you type "done".

HTH