Re: previous references

[Daniele Segato <daniele.bilug@gmail.com>]

Il giorno dom, 04/10/2009 alle 11.27 +0200, Johan Herland ha scritto:
> On Sunday 04 October 2009, Octavian Râşniţă wrote:
> > Are the following commands specifying the same reference?
> > 
> > prompt> git log -1 HEAD^^^ ... log entry ...
> > prompt> git log -1 HEAD^~2 ... log entry ...
> > prompt> git log -1 HEAD~1^^ ... log entry ...
> > prompt> git log -1 HEAD~3 ... log entry ...
> 
> Yes

the ~ is used to select the first parent of a commit and their
grand-parents

HEAD~ means the parent of the current head
HEAD~2 means the grand-parent
HEAD~3 the grand-grand-parent..

the ^ is used to select a direct parent of a commit
HEAD^ is the same as HEAD~
HEAD^^ is the same as HEAD~2 (parent of the parent)
HEAD^2 is NOT the same of HEAD~2, it means the "second parent" of HEAD:
this make sense only if HEAD has at least two parents (because it is a
merge commit) if it hasn't you'll get:

fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD^2': unknown revision or path not in the
working tree.
Use '--' to separate paths from revisions


you can read the same here: http://progit.org/book/ch6-1.html

regards,
Daniele