Apologies if this is a known issue; I was unable to find anything similar in the archive. The problem is, deleting a branch whose name contains slashes doesn’t delete the directories in .git/refs/heads/. I’ve tried both git 2.5.4 and 2.6.4 on OS X 10.11 with HFS+ (case-insensitive, case-preserving). Here’s the sequence of commands: % mkdir Foobar % cd Foobar/ % git init % git checkout -b master % touch file.txt % git add file.txt % git commit -m "add a file" % git checkout -b another/branch At this point, there's file .git/refs/heads/another/branch % git checkout master % git branch -d another/branch At this point, there's an empty directory .git/refs/heads/another/. Only the “leaf” file noted above is deleted, not the directory above it. % git checkout -b Another/branch At this point, the file .git/refs/heads/another/branch is re-created. Note the case of its enclosing directory. % git status On branch Another/branch nothing to commit, working directory clean % git branch -l another/branch master Note the difference in case between the last two commands' output. In addition, there's no asterisk next to another/branch indicating it's current. Because the first branch deletion didn't also delete the enclosing directory tree below .git/refs/heads/, the new branch gets created beneath it. However, there's inconsistent info between the file system and the git database. It seems like git branch -d ascend the hierarchy (up to .git/refs/heads/), deleting any empty directories. ---- Karl Moskowski <kmoskowski@xxxxxx> <https://about.me/kolpanic> -- 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