Hello, I'm experiencing strange behavior with :/<text> references, which seems to be inconsistent with the explanation in the docs on two counts. First, sometimes the matched commit is not the youngest. Second, some commits cannot be found at all, even if they are reachable from HEAD. Here is a script to reproduce the behavior (Git built from current pu): #!/bin/sh export GIT_CONFIG_NOSYSTEM=1 export GIT_ATTR_NOSYSTEM=1 cd "$(mktemp -d --suffix .gitrepro)" git --version git init git commit -q --allow-empty -m initial git commit -q --allow-empty -m foo git checkout -q -b early-branch git commit -q --allow-empty -m foobar git checkout -q --detach git commit -q --allow-empty -m foobarbaz echo echo "The following should all print 'foobarbaz':" git show --format=%s ':/foo' -- git show --format=%s ':/foobar' -- git show --format=%s ':/foobarbaz' -- echo echo "With an explicit branch:" git branch late-branch git show --format=%s ':/foo' -- git show --format=%s ':/foobar' -- git show --format=%s ':/foobarbaz' -- Here is the output on my machine: git version 2.18.0.516.g6fb7f6652 Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/tmp.WeCD0QZPIf.gitrepro/.git/ The following should all print 'foobarbaz': foo foobar fatal: bad revision ':/foobarbaz' With an explicit branch: foo foobarbaz foobarbaz First, the commit with message "foobar" clearly matches the regular expression /foo/ as well as /foobar/, but ":/foo" resolves to an older commit. However, Documentation/revisions.txt indicates that a :/<text> reference should resolve to the _youngest_ matching commit. Second, the commit with message "foobarbaz" is reachable from HEAD, and yet the regular expression /foobarbaz/ fails to match it. The same documentation indicates that :/<text> references find commits reachable from any ref, and the glossary entry for "ref" states that HEAD is a "special-purpose ref" even though it does not begin with "refs/". It looks to me like references reachable from `master` are always picked over other references, and that references reachable only from HEAD are not matched at all. Is the observed behavior intentional? If so, what am I misunderstanding? Thanks! WC (for searchability: colon slash text references)