I think this behaviour contradicts the manual which strongly links ls-tree to ls(1): ?0[steffen@wales ]$ ls NEWSS ls: cannot access 'NEWSS': No such file or directory ?2[steffen@wales ]$ git ls-tree --name-only master NEWSS ?0[steffen@wales ]$ ls NEWS NEWS ?0[steffen@wales ]$ git ls-tree --name-only master NEWS NEWS ?0[steffen@wales ]$ Ciao. --steffen