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I think I'll see if I can figure out a way to mention this and at the
same time remove most of the rest of the references to the `.git`
directory when explaining references (which you talked about
further down), including packed refs.

A colleague will be explaining reflog for an audience tomorrow, and
decided to briefly explain refs, too—which tells me this is
much-needed.

For refs themselves, perhaps "git for-each-ref" is a reasonable place
to start? Since it tells you the refs you have and how to spell them
explicitly regardless of how they are stored?

Interesting, do you use git for-each-ref?
What do you use it for?

Ah, yes, but primarily for scripting.

What I should have clarified is that "the tool (I know of) to
interrogate the refs you currently have is git-for-each-ref" (like how
git-ls-remote is the tool to interrogate a remote's refs). It avoids
the issues with assuming "tree .git/refs" or similar will capture the
actual data.

Ah, that makes sense! I spent a little while trying to come up with
something that would give a "similar result" to running
`cat .git/<refname>` and I came up with this:

git for-each-ref <ref-name> --include-root-refs  --format="%(refname)   %(if)%(symref)%(then)%(symref)%(else)%(objectname:short)%(end)"

I hoped to find a simple equivalent to that `cat` command
(kind of the equivalent of `git cat-file -p`) that would work with
other ref backends but couldn't find one.