Terminal shows “>” after running command

Question

I am new to Mac Terminal. I am learning. After entering a command it gives me just that: > What does it mean? What should I do now, how to continue or scape?

Here is the command I issued:

for file in *.txt; do echo mv "$file" "${file/#new/nou}”; done

Answer 1

In your case, the problem is you are inputing a ” character in your command after nou} (note, not a " but a ”) .

The command should look like this:

for file in *.txt; do echo mv "$file" "${file/#new/nou}"; done

To break out of any ongoing command just press Ctrl+C.

Answer 2

It means that you've entered something that leads the shell to believe the command is not complete, and you need to enter more text. A "\" character is most likely. Either finish your command or use Ctrl-C to break out of it.