How to delete remote branch with name <A4><A4><BD><BC>

General
#1

git branch -av listing the weird characters branch as remotes/origin/<A4><A4><BD><BC>

git push origin --delete "<A4><A4><BD><BC>" showing no such remote branch.

With git ls-remote --heads lists the branch like below.

ec9dd6610c545bca163221c11843ad03f642cd62 refs/heads/▒▒▒▒

git push origin --delete refs/remotes/origin/▒▒▒▒
! [remote rejected] origin/▒▒▒▒ (deny deleting a hidden ref)
 error: failed to push some refs to gitlab repository

Also have tried with gitk & Windows Git-GUI also but no success.

GitLab GUI > Repository > Branch - shows - 500 - Whoops, something went wrong on our end.

Possible solution would be appreciated.

#2

What OS and command prompt are you using when running git branch -av? Is it Windows, or Linux?

The shell in use is likely masking the actual characters with <CODE> substitutions because they are unprintable. This is a known behavior of Windows’ cmd prompt, as an example.

If you’re using Windows, this article can help you print out the actual characters instead of their <CHAR> escape form: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41416262/14595652

You can then attempt to copy and pass the actual characters to your delete commands (git branch -D 'value', git push origin ':value', etc.)

#3

Thanks for assisting me. GitLab server is running on RHEL. I have tried to remove the masked branch on Ubuntu-18.04lts and Windows-10 systems.

As per the above given link tried the steps on Windows-10 Command prompt and Git Bash as well, but still unable to view the masked characters to delete.

#4

If they are unprintable characters, you can view their ordinal numbers in hexadecimal by passing the git branch -a output through od -cx on a Linux terminal.

Then to reference the same characters (for example, 1f e2 6b 4c) in a string, use the bash syntax of $'<values>', for example: git branch -D $'\x1f\xe2\x6b\x4c'

#5

od -cx output printing like below

$ od -cx branch.txt

0000000 r e m o t e s / o r i g i n / 244
6572 6f6d 6574 2f73 726f 6769 6e69 a42f
0000020 244 275 274 \n
bda4 0abc
0000024

Here git branch -D $'\xbda4\x0abc'
error: branch '▒a4
bc' not found.

Also git branch -D $'\x244\x6572\x6f6d\x6574\x2f73\x726f\x6769\x6e69\xa42f'

error: branch '$4e72o6de74/73r6fg69n69▒2f' not found.