Seeing '>' as an option makes it somewhat relevant to mention here: I'd recommend not ending your prompt with a '>' character (as you'd see in DOS/Windows a lot, which might make it seem like a nice option). If you accidentally copy and paste your prompt with a command after it, (which is easy to do with a couple mouse clicks, or if you forget what's in your clipboard after copying some lines from your terminal,) the first thing after the > sign is the file for a script or executable and you will truncate the file (make it 0 bytes). This can be especially bad if you're root at the time. (That makes # as a root prompt especially a good idea.)