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When I type

echo it's terminal

or anything containing 'blah blah terminal blah blah with echo the output shows

Blockquote

what does this mean.

fdownnn
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  • Please Google "bash quoting". – FedKad May 20 '21 at 07:50
  • The ">" is a secondary prompt, and means that echo is waiting for you to enter the missing ending part of the command, here a quote, This is very basic programming syntax, Quotes comes in pairs, a start and an end. And if you need a single standing quote in between start and end, it must be escaped (marked) for the interpreter or compiler to understand it. – Soren A May 20 '21 at 08:07
  • thankyou I completely missed ' in it's – fdownnn May 23 '21 at 09:55

1 Answers1

3

This is normal behaviour. ' has a special meaning to bash: it quotes a string. The > prompt indicates that the command is not yet complete, and bash awaits further input. Indeed, you opened the quotes, that means bash expects a string that later is closed by another '.

You will have the result you expected with either one of

echo "it's terminal"
echo it\'s terminal
vanadium
  • 88,010
  • Thanks so ' in it's means I opend the quotes for the terminal and didn't closed it just learning a lot – fdownnn May 20 '21 at 08:03