Tilman Vogel <tilman.vogel@xxxxxx> writes: > Because of an empty line in the input file, my script > > cat remove.txt | sed 's/origin\///' | xargs -d '\n' git push origin --delete > > executed (among other deletions) an implicit `git push origin --delete > ""`. I wonder, what that one is supposed to do. It is supposed to error out, but incorrectly and silently turns itself into a "matching push". This should fix it, I think (not even compiled tested). builtin/push.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git c/builtin/push.c w/builtin/push.c index 03adb58602..194967ed79 100644 --- c/builtin/push.c +++ w/builtin/push.c @@ -115,7 +115,7 @@ static void set_refspecs(const char **refs, int nr, const char *repo) else refspec_appendf(&rs, "refs/tags/%s", ref); } else if (deleterefs) { - if (strchr(ref, ':')) + if (strchr(ref, ':') || !*ref) die(_("--delete only accepts plain target ref names")); refspec_appendf(&rs, ":%s", ref); } else if (!strchr(ref, ':')) {