Thank you for filling out a Git bug report! Please answer the following questions to help us understand your issue. What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue) $ git init Initialized empty Git repository in /home/emusser/git/test/.git/ $ git checkout -b working-branch Switched to a new branch 'working-branch' $ git commit -m "commit 1" --allow-empty [working-branch (root-commit) 1238cf8] commit 1 $ git commit -m "commit 2" --allow-empty [working-branch 2dd4408] commit 2 $ git branch other-branch $ git commit -m "commit 3" --allow-empty [working-branch 39f626e] commit 3 $ git rebase -i --update-refs HEAD~2 [I am presented]: pick 2dd4408 commit 2 # empty update-ref other-branch pick 39f626e commit 3 # empty [I deleted first two lines and submitted]: pick 39f626e commit 3 # empty Successfully rebased and updated refs/heads/working-branch. Updated the following refs with --update-refs: refs/heads/other-branch $ git rev-parse other-branch other-branch fatal: ambiguous argument 'other-branch': unknown revision or path not in the working tree. Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this: 'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]' What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior) The branch I interactively removed from the rebase to not actually be deleted. It is common to remove unrelated changes (and refs) from your working branch before pushing. I'd hope in this case I would not have to use `git rebase --no-update-refs' (if I'm set in my config UpdateRefs=true) to avoid branches from being deleted. What happened instead? (Actual behavior) The branch was deleted. What's different between what you expected and what actually happened? The branch was deleted when I would expect branches that are no longer listed to not be updated or deleted. Anything else you want to add: Please review the rest of the bug report below. You can delete any lines you don't wish to share. [System Info] git version: git version 2.38.0 cpu: aarch64 built from commit: 3dcec76d9df911ed8321007b1d197c1a206dc164 sizeof-long: 8 sizeof-size_t: 8 shell-path: /bin/sh uname: Linux 5.16.13-generic #2 SMP Fri Mar 11 12:48:38 UTC 2022 aarch64 compiler info: gnuc: 10.2 libc info: glibc: 2.17 $SHELL (typically, interactive shell): /bin/bash [Enabled Hooks] pre-commit