The # prompt means you're super-user, ie, root.
% means you're just a normal user.

On Sun, 20 Sep 1998, Ulrich Hausmann wrote:

> Another question: all books and also your example show the "%" as prompt
> (some also refer to ">" as prompt. I only saw that when I felt in the
> debugger (?)). But I get "#" as prompt. Why that? Or is that just for
> all Macs the prompt?

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