CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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OscarRyz
OscarRyz

Reputation: 199215

What's the difference between ~ and ^ in git

I asked this question long ago but I still don't know what do ~ and ^ mean in this answer:

If you're talking about a remote branch, say, origin/master, you can use ~ and ^ to refer to ancestor commits relative to a branch the same way you can with local branches

What's the difference?

Upvotes: 7

Views: 1549

Answers (3)

alkalinity
alkalinity

Reputation: 2030

According to this document, tilde (~) references the linear ancestors of the commit (parent, grandparent, great-grandparent), whereas caret (^) references multiple parents. In cases where there are multiple merge ancestors, each merge source would be a parent.

Upvotes: 5

Nevik Rehnel
Nevik Rehnel

Reputation: 51935

As the manpage states:

<rev>^, e.g. HEAD^, v1.5.1^0
A suffix ^ to a revision parameter means the first parent of that commit object. ^<n> means the <n>th parent (i.e. <rev>^ is equivalent to <rev>^1). [...]

<rev>~<n>, e.g. master~3
A suffix ~<n> to a revision parameter means the commit object that is the <n>th generation ancestor of the named commit object, following only the first parents. I.e. <rev>~3 is equivalent to <rev>^^^ which is equivalent to <rev>^1^1^1.

Upvotes: 4

mipadi
mipadi

Reputation: 410592

^ means "(first) parent of". ~ is similar, but it takes a number as an argument and basically means "ancestor of". So, for example:

HEAD            = latest commit
HEAD^  = HEAD~1 = parent of latest commit
HEAD^^ = HEAD~2 = grandparent of latest commit
HEAD~100        = 100th ancestor of latest commit

Upvotes: 7

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