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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXAMPLES | GIT | COLOPHON |
GIT-CHECK-REF-FOR(1) Git Manual GIT-CHECK-REF-FOR(1)
git-check-ref-format - Ensures that a reference name is well formed
git check-ref-format [--normalize]
[--[no-]allow-onelevel] [--refspec-pattern]
<refname>
git check-ref-format --branch <branchname-shorthand>
Checks if a given refname is acceptable, and exits with a non-zero
status if it is not.
A reference is used in Git to specify branches and tags. A branch
head is stored in the refs/heads hierarchy, while a tag is stored in
the refs/tags hierarchy of the ref namespace (typically in
$GIT_DIR/refs/heads and $GIT_DIR/refs/tags directories or, as entries
in file $GIT_DIR/packed-refs if refs are packed by git gc).
Git imposes the following rules on how references are named:
1. They can include slash / for hierarchical (directory) grouping,
but no slash-separated component can begin with a dot . or end
with the sequence .lock.
2. They must contain at least one /. This enforces the presence of a
category like heads/, tags/ etc. but the actual names are not
restricted. If the --allow-onelevel option is used, this rule is
waived.
3. They cannot have two consecutive dots .. anywhere.
4. They cannot have ASCII control characters (i.e. bytes whose
values are lower than \040, or \177 DEL), space, tilde ~, caret
^, or colon : anywhere.
5. They cannot have question-mark ?, asterisk *, or open bracket [
anywhere. See the --refspec-pattern option below for an exception
to this rule.
6. They cannot begin or end with a slash / or contain multiple
consecutive slashes (see the --normalize option below for an
exception to this rule)
7. They cannot end with a dot ..
8. They cannot contain a sequence @{.
9. They cannot be the single character @.
10. They cannot contain a \.
These rules make it easy for shell script based tools to parse
reference names, pathname expansion by the shell when a reference
name is used unquoted (by mistake), and also avoid ambiguities in
certain reference name expressions (see gitrevisions(7)):
1. A double-dot .. is often used as in ref1..ref2, and in some
contexts this notation means ^ref1 ref2 (i.e. not in ref1 and in
ref2).
2. A tilde ~ and caret ^ are used to introduce the postfix nth
parent and peel onion operation.
3. A colon : is used as in srcref:dstref to mean "use srcref’s value
and store it in dstref" in fetch and push operations. It may also
be used to select a specific object such as with git cat-file:
"git cat-file blob v1.3.3:refs.c".
4. at-open-brace @{ is used as a notation to access a reflog entry.
With the --branch option, it expands the “previous branch syntax”
@{-n}. For example, @{-1} is a way to refer the last branch you were
on. This option should be used by porcelains to accept this syntax
anywhere a branch name is expected, so they can act as if you typed
the branch name.
--[no-]allow-onelevel
Controls whether one-level refnames are accepted (i.e., refnames
that do not contain multiple /-separated components). The default
is --no-allow-onelevel.
--refspec-pattern
Interpret <refname> as a reference name pattern for a refspec (as
used with remote repositories). If this option is enabled,
<refname> is allowed to contain a single * in the refspec (e.g.,
foo/bar*/baz or foo/bar*baz/ but not foo/bar*/baz*).
--normalize
Normalize refname by removing any leading slash (/) characters
and collapsing runs of adjacent slashes between name components
into a single slash. If the normalized refname is valid then
print it to standard output and exit with a status of 0,
otherwise exit with a non-zero status. (--print is a deprecated
way to spell --normalize.)
· Print the name of the previous branch:
$ git check-ref-format --branch @{-1}
· Determine the reference name to use for a new branch:
$ ref=$(git check-ref-format --normalize "refs/heads/$newbranch")||
{ echo "we do not like '$newbranch' as a branch name." >&2 ; exit 1 ; }
Part of the git(1) suite
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control system)
project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual page,
see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained from the
project's upstream Git repository ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on
2017-07-05. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.12.0.244.g625568 03/12/2017 GIT-CHECK-REF-FOR(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-branch(1), git-tag(1)