Re: bash: unescaped `>` character when switching branches

Kristoffer Haugsbakk
2025-06-25T20:19:42Z

On Wed, Jun 25, 2025, at 15:57, Phillip Wood wrote:
> On 25/06/2025 09:53, Kristoffer Haugsbakk wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 24, 2025, at 14:59, Ondrej Pohorelsky wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Our customer has found a possible issue when switching branches.
>>> Output redirection character `>` is not escaped properly when
>>> switching/checking out to different branch.
>>>
>>> Steps to reproduce:
>>> 1. Create a new branch and switch back to master
>>> ```
>>> $ git switch -C 'issue#1234>/tmp/dangerfile'
>>> Switched to a new branch 'issue#1234>/tmp/dangerfile'
>>> $ git switch master
>>> ```
>>
>> It’s too bad that git-check-ref-format(1) does not disallow `>`.
>
> It also allows `<`, `$`, `&`, `;`, `(`, `)`, `#`, `"`, `'`, '`' and `|`.
> Our ref format is not designed for them to be used unquoted in the
> shell. I think the problem here is with our completion script not
> quoting the refname, not the format.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2025, at 18:38, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> "Kristoffer Haugsbakk" <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 24, 2025, at 14:59, Ondrej Pohorelsky wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Our customer has found a possible issue when switching branches.
>>> Output redirection character `>` is not escaped properly when
>>> switching/checking out to different branch.
>>>
>>> Steps to reproduce:
>>> 1. Create a new branch and switch back to master
>>> ```
>>> $ git switch -C 'issue#1234>/tmp/dangerfile'
>>> Switched to a new branch 'issue#1234>/tmp/dangerfile'
>>> $ git switch master
>>> ```
>>
>> It’s too bad that git-check-ref-format(1) does not disallow `>`.
>
> Is it? It looks like an outright bug in the completion code,
> nothing more, to me.

That was an aside.