Shell – Exit of “> ” mode in Unix shell

command lineescape-charactersshell

In sh (not Bash), how would we abort execution of command when the prompt is in > mode?

For example, when entering a string with quotes only at the beginning, it makes the prompt look like >, without the ability to quit it normally, unless hitting Ctrl + D. Example:

root@MyPC:~# echo "hello
> I am
> (How do I exit of this mode?)

In case that I don't know which character delimits the string (" or ' or simply escaping a newline/spaces with backslash), is there a way to let Bash know that I want to abort the execution of the current command?

Best Answer

^C aka Ctrl+C will abort what you're doing and get you back to a normal prompt.

Related Solutions

Shell – Unix Shell and colours

This snippet is used to print out the hostname of the system with a blue background and a green font.

To color your shell, you use special color escape sequences.

\e[ starts the color scheme, 32; will set the foreground color to green, 44 will set the background color to blue and m will end it.

$(command) creates a new shell, executes command and returns the result (not the return value).

hostname returns the hostname of the current system.

\e[m will reset the coloring of the output.

From the echo manpage:

   -n     do not output the trailing newline
   -e     enable interpretation of backslash escapes

IMHO your snippet could be simplified to echo -e "\e[32;44m $(hostname) \e[m";

See the chapter 6.1 Colours of the BASH Prompt HOWTO for more details.

Bash – How to exit bash history search mode

CtrlG this will abort the search

Best Answer

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Shell – Unix Shell and colours

Bash – How to exit bash history search mode

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