git patches cause error unrecognized input

Question

I'm running Mac OSX 10.9.4 (Mavericks) and have git version 2.8.2. I've tested this with a completely new repo. Here's example.

mkdir gitest
cd gitest
git init
echo "monkeyface" > monkey.txt
git commit -m "first commit"
echo "monkeyface farted" > monkeyfart.txt
git add .
git diff HEAD > new.patch
rm monkeyfart.txt
git reset --hard HEAD
git apply new.patch --check
>fatal: unrecognized input

Any ideas what is causing this? Could it be anything in my .gitconfig file?

[user]
    name = myusername
    email = [email protected]
[color]
  ui = always
[alias]
  st = status -sb -uall
  lg = log --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --graph
  undocommit = reset --soft HEAD^
  undopush = push -f origin HEAD^:master
[core]
    editor = vim
    excludesfile = ~/.gitignore_global
    pager = less -r
[commit]
  template = ~/.gitmessage.txt
[filter "media"]
    clean = git-media-clean %f
    smudge = git-media-smudge %f

UPDATE:

While the answer linked below offers some idea on what the problem might have been, my issue was specifically hidden in my configuration since no color argument was being passed into the command. This answer is relevant but my question and answer might be helpful to others who may experience a similar issue.

Extract changes from diff file to current branch

Answer 1

There is format problem in patch file. To fixthe path file:

1. Open your patch file in notepad++ then enter these two menus:

   Encoding/Convert to UTF-8
   Edit/EOL conversion/Unix (LF)
   

2. Run:

   git apply --reject --whitespace=fix your_patch.patch