A string of characters displayed by interactive shells to signal the shell is waiting a user input.
A prompt is a string of characters displayed by a shell or other command line program to indicate that it is waiting for user input.
Further reading
- Display stuff below the prompt at a shell prompt?
- Why do I sometimes get repeatedly prompted with ">" in the terminal?
- Display command in xterm titlebar
- How to include commands in Bash's PS1 without breaking line length calculation?
- Why is my bash prompt getting bugged when I browse the history? (and other command line editing weirdness)
