Hello! I hope posting this to this mailing list is okay, this is the first ever mail that I submit to a technical mailing list. When using the git branch command, git uses a '*' to denote the current branch. Therefore, in bash this: $ branchName=$(git branch -q) $ echo $branchName produces a directory listing, because the '*' is interpreded by the shell. While an (unwieldly) workaround exists: $ branchName=$(git symbolic-ref -q HEAD) $ branchName=${branch##refs/heads/} it would still be nice, if there were a --current flag, that returned only the current branch name, omitting the star: $ branchName=$(git branch --current -q) $ echo $branchName master -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html