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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXAMPLES | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-CHECK-REF-FORMAT(1) Git Manual GIT-CHECK-REF-FORMAT(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, the command takes a name and checks if
it can be used as a valid branch name (e.g. when creating a new
branch). But be cautious when using the previous checkout syntax
that may refer to a detached HEAD state. The rule git
check-ref-format --branch $name implements may be stricter than
what git check-ref-format refs/heads/$name says (e.g. a dash may
appear at the beginning of a ref component, but it is explicitly
forbidden at the beginning of a branch name). When run with the
--branch option in a repository, the input is first expanded for
the “previous checkout syntax” @{-n}. For example, @{-1} is a way
to refer the last thing that was checked out using "git switch" or
"git checkout" operation. 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. As an exception note
that, the “previous checkout operation” might result in a commit
object name when the N-th last thing checked out was not a branch.
--[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 thing checked out:
$ 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 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version 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 manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-CHECK-REF-FORMAT(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-branch(1), git-ls-remote(1), git-tag(1), stg-new(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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