quick BASH question

[LinuxZealot]

so earlier my finger slipped and I accidental hit the wrong button (I typed in ls' please note the appostrophe.) this made some craziness happen in my terminal (example below) that I was curious about and was wondering if anyone could help. so allow me to cut to the proverbial chase.

cyrus@gizmotron:~$ ls'
>
>
>
>
>
>
and I can't get out of this and back to the command prompt without starting a new terminal session. first of all, what have I come across, second of all how do I get out of it, and third of all, is this feature useful and if so how can I use it?

I would be most utterly grateful for any light shed upon this subject
thank you

[hazel]

You entered an unpaired quote. Bash assumes that quotes and brackets always come in pairs so it concluded that you hadn't finished typing in your command. The > is a continuation prompt, used whenever a command is to go over one line. Bash will go on prompting you for a continuation until you enter the second quote.

[anomie]

Or until you Ctrl-C

[LinuxZealot]

awesome, thank you verymuch

[The O'Really Factor]

Well if you ever have any more questions about bash, just refer to this guide:

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/abs-guide.html