doc: interpret-trailers: explain key format
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 only basing their trailer keys on the documentation examples.[1] The previous commit provided us with an appropriate paragraph to describe the key format. † 1: Technically they would then miss out on using digits in them since all of the example keys just use letters and hyphens Reported-by: Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@google.com> Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <code@khaugsbakk.name> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Kristoffer Haugsbakk committed
Jun 10, 2026 at 23:21 UTC
3a333ba1a036575fbe14bebffb190df75e28404d
1 file changed
+2
-1
Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc
+2
-1
index bcd79b19bd..c35fa9c688 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc
@@ -18,7 +18,8 @@ Add or parse trailers metadata at the end of the otherwise
free-form part of a commit message, or any other kind of text.
A _trailer_ in its simplest form is a key-value pair with a colon as a
-separator. A _trailer block_ consists of one or more trailers. The
+separator. The _key_ consists of ASCII alphanumeric characters and
+hyphens (`-`). A _trailer block_ consists of one or more trailers. The
trailer block needs to be preceded by a blank line, where a _blank line_
is either an empty or a whitespace-only line. For example, in the
following commit message