git: fatal: I don't handle protocol '​​http'

git clone whitespace
guettli picture guettli · May 27, 2015 · Viewed 204.7k times · Source

I copy and pasted an git clone command from a web page: https://fedorahosted.org/ibus-typing-booster/

I got this:

user@host> git clone ​​http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/ibus-typing-booster.git

Cloning into 'ibus-typing-booster'...
fatal: I don't handle protocol '​​http'

Answer

guettli picture guettli · May 27, 2015

I copied and pasted the whole line git clone http://....

The character between git clone and http://... looks like a space, but it is a special Unicode character!

Short answer: After removing this character, and entering a real space, it worked!

For people who love details: I see two ways to reveal ascii vs special-unicode-characters

Way1: Python

Here is the real line:

vi t.txt # copy+paste the line
python
open('t.txt').read()
git clone \xe2\x80\x8b\xe2\x80\x8bhttp://...

Way2: less

vi t.txt # copy+paste the line
LESSCHARSET=ascii less vi.txt

If it looks like git clone <E2><80><8B><E2><80><8B>http://, then you copy+pasted special-unicode-characters.

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