git branch in Bash subshell "$(git branch -a)" including ls output as part of return?

Hello Folks,

I am Running OSX 10.10.5 Yosemite along with git 2.6.3 installed via homebrew package manager.

I recently stumbled across the following bug in some scripting I was doing. "git branch -a --list" and "git branch -a" seem to include the output of an "ls" command if executed as part of a subshell in a bash script. I can't speculate to the reason.

Script goal: Delete all branches aside from master in the repository Example outputs from several commands repo:

ls output:

ajonespro:Deploy_Script ajones$ ls -l total 0 drwxr-xr-x 11 ajones wheel 374 Dec 7 10:50 AppDeploy drwxr-xr-x 11 ajones wheel 374 Dec 7 11:15 WebDeploy

git branch -a output:

ajonespro:Deploy_Script ajones$ git branch -a

* DWH_concurrent_api
  Email_No_Error_If_No_Old_Version
  IT/configs_in_app_support
  PHP_Build_Repo
  master
  remotes/origin/DWH_concurrent_api
  remotes/origin/Email_No_Error_If_No_Old_Version
  remotes/origin/IT/configs_in_app_support
  remotes/origin/PHP_Build_Repo
  remotes/origin/master

echo $(git branch -a) output:

ajonespro:Deploy_Script ajones$ echo $(git branch -a) AppDeploy WebDeploy DWH_concurrent_api Email_No_Error_If_No_Old_Version IT/configs_in_app_support PHP_Build_Repo master remotes/origin/DWH_concurrent_api remotes/origin/Email_No_Error_If_No_Old_Version remotes/origin/IT/configs_in_app_support remotes/origin/PHP_Build_Repo remotes/origin/master

While it might be hard to see from that output, The first two "branches" in the subshell's output are actually the directories contained within the repo. If I place a file at the root it includes that in the branch list as well. Since my test file "test.txt" (not shown in example) and "WebDeploy" are sorted before all the branches, I suspect some output buffer is being accidentally being written to.

Has any experienced this before, and can anyone reproduce it on a different configuration? I wouldn't be surprised if it was some weird bug with Apple's included terminal, but since I've only observed it with git branch, I thought I'd try contact git maintainers first.

On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 11:52:28AM -0500, Alex Jones wrote:

Looking at the two outputs, you are seeing the shell's glob expansion of the '*' current branch marker. You probably want to quote the command expansion to prevent this:

echo "$(git branch -a)"

On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 04:58:10PM +0000, Charles Bailey wrote:

Pressing send has, of course, caused me to think further. You probably don't want to parse the output of a "porcelain" command such as "git branch" at all, but instead look at using something like "git for-each-ref", perhaps with the --format=%(refname) option, grepping out master and iterating through the rest.

That did the trick, thanks for the help and the suggestion.

On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 12:02 PM, Charles Bailey <charles@hashpling.org> wrote: