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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-08T04:46:48+00:00

I’m trying to commit some changes as a different user, but i do not

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I’m trying to commit some changes as a different user, but i do not have a valid email address, following command is not working for me:

git commit --author="john doe" -m "some fix"
fatal: No existing author found with 'john doe'

I have the same problem when trying to commit with only an email address

git commit --author="john@doe.com" -m "some fix"
fatal: No existing author found with 'john@doe.com'

On the GIT man pages for the commit command it says i can use the 

standard A U Thor <author@example.com> format

For the –author option.

Where is this format defined ?
what does A and U stand for ? how do i commit for a different user with only a username or only an email?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The

    standard A U Thor <author@example.com> format

    Seems to be defined as followed:
    ( as far as i know, with absolutely no warranty )

    A U Thor = required username

    • The separation of the characters probably indicates that spaces are allowed, it could also be resembling initials.
    • The username has to be followed by 1 space, extra spaces will be truncated

    <author@example.com> = optional email address

    • Must always be between < > signs.
    • The email address format isn’t validated, you can pretty much enter whatever you want
    • Optional, you can omit this explicitly by using <>

    If you don’t use this exact syntax, git will search through the existing commits and use the first commit that contains your provided string.

    Examples:

    1. Only user name

      Omit the email address explicitly:

      git commit --author="John Doe <>" -m "Impersonation is evil."

    2. Only email

      Technically this isn’t possible. You can however enter the email address as the username and explicitly omit the email address. This doesn’t seem like it’s very useful.
      I think it would make even more sense to extract the user name from the email address and then use that as the username. But if you have to:

      git commit --author="john@doe.com <>" -m "Impersonation is evil."

    I ran in to this when trying to convert a repository from mercurial to git.
    I tested the commands on msysgit 1.7.10.

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