The CLI command prompt

By default, the CLI command prompt indicates the device being accessed and the current CLI context. For example, the prompt: A:ALA-1>config>router>if# indicates the active context, the user is on the device with hostname ALA-1 in the configure>router>interface context. In the prompt, the separator used between contexts is the ‟>”symbol.

At the end of the prompt, there is either a pound sign (‟#”) or a dollar sign (‟$”). A ‟#” at the end of the prompt indicates the context is an existing context. A ‟$” at the end of the prompt indicates the context has been newly created. New contexts are newly created for logical entities when the user first navigates into the context.

Because there can be a large number of sublevels in the CLI, the environment command reduced-promptno of nodes in prompt allows the user to control the number of levels displayed in the prompt.

All special characters (#, $, and so on) must be enclosed within double quotes, otherwise it is seen as a comment character and all characters on the command line following the # are ignored.

Example

*A:ALU-7210>config>router# interface "primary#1"

When changes are made to the configuration file a ‟*” appears in the prompt string (*A:ALU-7210) indicating that the changes have not been saved. When an admin save command is executed the ‟*” disappears. This behavior is controlled in the saved-ind-prompt command in the environment context.