Eric Sunshine [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

+The output is in the format: '<SHA-1 ID>' '<tab>' '<reference>'.

The angle brackets in the '<foo>' notation indicate a placeholder,
however, in the output, TAB is literal, it is never replaced with
something else. So, to be more accurate and less confusing, we should
instead say:

    The output is in the format: '<SHA-1 ID>' 'TAB' '<reference>'.

I understand that you copied '<tab>' from git-show-ref.txt, but we
don't need to replicate that mistake.

I too found that odd. I took inspiration from git-rev-parse.txt for the
next iteration. I've pushed that to my branch (which you can fetch if
interested), but I'll wait another day or two for more review before
resubmitting. (I took the liberty of fixing git-show-ref.txt as well.)

Moreover, these days, we support hash algorithms beyond merely SHA-1,
so the first placeholder should probably talk about object-ID instead:

    The output is in the format: '<OID>' 'TAB' '<reference>'.

Good call; I've made this update and it will be included in the next
iteration.

--
Sean Allred