and a reference to an object is always the 40-byte hex
representation of that SHA1 name. The files in the `refs`
subdirectory are expected to contain these hex references
-(usually with a final `\'\n\'` at the end), and you should thus
+(usually with a final `\n` at the end), and you should thus
expect to see a number of 41-byte files containing these
references in these `refs` subdirectories when you actually start
populating your tree.
----------------
which is another incomprehensible object name. Again, if you want to,
-you can use `git cat-file -t 8988d\...` to see that this time the object
+you can use `git cat-file -t 8988d...` to see that this time the object
is not a "blob" object, but a "tree" object (you can also use
`git cat-file` to actually output the raw object contents, but you'll see
mainly a binary mess, so that's less interesting).
(note how we didn't need the `\--add` flag this time, since git knew
about the file already).
-Note what happens to the different 'git diff-\*' versions here. After
-we've updated `hello` in the index, `git diff-files -p` now shows no
+Note what happens to the different 'git diff-{asterisk}' versions here.
+After we've updated `hello` in the index, `git diff-files -p` now shows no
differences, but `git diff-index -p HEAD` still *does* show that the
current state is different from the state we committed. In fact, now
'git diff-index' shows the same difference whether we use the `--cached`
[NOTE]
============
Here is an ASCII art by Jon Loeliger that illustrates how
-various diff-\* commands compare things.
+various 'diff-{asterisk}' commands compare things.
diff-tree
+----+
The first two lines indicate that it is showing the two branches
and the first line of the commit log message from their
top-of-the-tree commits, you are currently on `master` branch
-(notice the asterisk `\*` character), and the first column for
+(notice the asterisk `{asterisk}` character), and the first column for
the later output lines is used to show commits contained in the
`master` branch, and the second column for the `mybranch`
branch. Three commits are shown along with their log messages.
-All of them have non blank characters in the first column (`*`
+All of them have non blank characters in the first column (`{asterisk}`
shows an ordinary commit on the current branch, `-` is a merge commit), which
means they are now part of the `master` branch. Only the "Some
work" commit has the plus `+` character in the second column,
before the commit log message is a short name you can use to
name the commit. In the above example, 'master' and 'mybranch'
are branch heads. 'master^' is the first parent of 'master'
-branch head. Please see linkgit:git-rev-parse[1] if you want to
+branch head. Please see linkgit:gitrevisions[7] if you want to
see more complex cases.
[NOTE]
first obtains the topmost commit object name from the remote site
by looking at the specified refname under `repo.git/refs/` directory,
and then tries to obtain the
-commit object by downloading from `repo.git/objects/xx/xxx\...`
+commit object by downloading from `repo.git/objects/xx/xxx...`
using the object name of that commit object. Then it reads the
commit object to find out its parent commits and the associate
tree object; it repeats this process until it gets all the
directory.
[NOTE]
-You will see two files, `pack-\*.pack` and `pack-\*.idx`,
+You will see two files, `pack-{asterisk}.pack` and `pack-{asterisk}.idx`,
in `.git/objects/pack` directory. They are closely related to
each other, and if you ever copy them by hand to a different
repository for whatever reason, you should make sure you copy