What does the '$' mean in command line commands?

Question

I often find command line commands starting with dollar signs in instructions to install many things. For example to install Ruby in Ubuntu, the website says to use the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install ruby-full

What does the $ represent?

Answer 1

$ is not part of the command, it is just shown to illustrate terminal input. A full log of the guys entry would read something like

Dominic@stackoverflow$ sudo ap...

See the answer below https://stackoverflow.com/a/48215530/1117934, for a more complete explanation on the difference between $ and #.

Answer 2

The $ is not part of the command. It's there to tell you that this command needs to be executed as a regular user.

When you prompt as a regular user (in bash shell at least), the line starts with the user name you're currently prompt as, followed by @, followed by the machine hostname, followed by :, followed by the current location, followed by $.

It looks like this :

bob@work-station:~$ 

But, if you prompt as root, the last $ will be replaced by a # :

root@work-station:~#

And that's the point of those tutorials :

• If the command starts with $, you know that the command should be executed as regular user.
• If it starts with #, it should be executed as root.

Hope it helps.