From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: "Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org>
Subject: Re: What is the scenario for a commit with 3 or more parents
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:19:46 -0700
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To: Bradley Wagner <bradley.wagner@hannonhill.com>
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Bradley Wagner <bradley.wagner@hannonhill.com> wrote:
> I was reading over the Specifying Revisions section in the man entry
> gitrevisions. I understand having 2 parent commits with a merge.
> 
> I was trying to understand the HEAD^2 style syntax and wondering where
> HEAD^3 would be used. From the example diagram, this would be Commit B
> but I'm unclear how this would ever happen. Is this some kind of
> multi-way merge?

Yes.  Its called an octopus merge.  It happpens sometimes when
merging 2 or more otherwise fairly isolated changes in a single
shot.  E.g. `git merge feature-a feature-b thing-c`.
 
> Does git log show the parents in their ordinal order in the "Merge:" line?

Yes.

-- 
Shawn.