Re: [PATCH] Do not ignore hidden refs

[Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>]

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> writes:

> On Sat, 18 Nov 2006, Petr Baudis wrote:
>>
>> Some of the ref manipulation tools (git-for-each-ref and git-show-ref in
>> particular) would not handle hidden (~ /^\./) refs. This may be an
>> acceptable or possibly even desirable behaviour for the ref walkers and
>> repackers, but git-show-ref hiddenrefname must work.
>
> No.
>
> Refnames MUST NOT start with a ".". 
>
> It's not even about the traditional unix "hidden file" thing. It's simply 
> a syntactic issue. A ref cannot start with a ".", because we use things 
> like ".." and "..." to separate them.

We do not forbid a refname that ends with a ".", but I think it
was a mistake.  We _can_ disambiguate the ones that begin with a
"." by saying "whatever..heads/.I-begin-with-dot", but not the
ones that end with "heads/I-end-with-dot...end-of-range".