From f2e5902b0a2449c8ea8509791932acbbacfe2316 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2026 23:11:33 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] doc: interpret-trailers: explain key format MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit A trailer key must consist of ASCII alphanumeric characters and hyphens *only*. Let’s document it explicitly instead of relying on readers being conservative and painting their trailers by numbers (by the documentation examples). The previous commit for “key–value pairs” allows us to segue right into describing these lines as consisting of a key and a value, which is our opening to describing the key format. Just like *trailer* we emphasize these two first standalone word mentions. They are then mostly used in placeholders throughout the rest of the document ( and ). Reported-by: Brendan Jackman Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc | 5 ++++- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc index e7c1f82161..92d9c95f9d 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc +++ b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc @@ -27,7 +27,10 @@ Signed-off-by: Alice Signed-off-by: Bob ------------------------------------------------ -the last two lines starting with `Signed-off-by` are trailers. +the last two lines starting with `Signed-off-by` are trailers. These two +trailers have the _key_ `Signed-off-by` and a _value_ (Alice and Bob). +The key must consist of only ASCII alphanumeric characters and hyphens +(`-`). The hyphens serve as interword separators. This command reads commit messages from either the __ arguments or the standard input if no __ is specified.