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I know ^ as a 'power of' character/symbol. According to ASCII it's called:

spacing circumflex accent

In git I see it (well, two of it) used in conjunction with HEAD here

git reset --hard HEAD^^

I sometimes see ~ too.

Precisely what is the ^ character doing here? That is, how do I interpret its meaning; what is it communicating?

stevec
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  • More commonly known as a [caret](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caret). – 0x5453 Feb 16 '22 at 13:58
  • @0x5453 thanks I'll add that term too – stevec Feb 16 '22 at 13:58
  • @0x5453 thanks again. I see `~3 is equivalent to ^^^`. So are the `^`s additive, as in 2 ^ symbols simply means.. well, after reading "HEAD^ means the first immediate parent of the tip of the current branch. HEAD^ is short for HEAD^1, and you can also address HEAD^2 and so on as appropriate." I'm still not sure what it means tbh. I *guess* HEAD^^ and HEAD^2 are the same thing. In practice, I *guess* they somehow mean a merge off a merge. I'll keep reading... – stevec Feb 16 '22 at 14:03
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    [`git help revisions`](https://git-scm.com/docs/gitrevisions#Documentation/gitrevisions.txt-emltrevgtltngtemegemHEADv1510em) – phd Feb 16 '22 at 14:08

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