1GITREVISIONS(7)                   Git Manual                   GITREVISIONS(7)
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NAME

6       gitrevisions - specifying revisions and ranges for Git
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SYNOPSIS

9       gitrevisions
10

DESCRIPTION

12       Many Git commands take revision parameters as arguments. Depending on
13       the command, they denote a specific commit or, for commands which walk
14       the revision graph (such as git-log(1)), all commits which can be
15       reached from that commit. In the latter case one can also specify a
16       range of revisions explicitly.
17
18       In addition, some Git commands (such as git-show(1)) also take revision
19       parameters which denote other objects than commits, e.g. blobs
20       ("files") or trees ("directories of files").
21

SPECIFYING REVISIONS

23       A revision parameter <rev> typically, but not necessarily, names a
24       commit object. It uses what is called an extended SHA-1 syntax. Here
25       are various ways to spell object names. The ones listed near the end of
26       this list name trees and blobs contained in a commit.
27
28       <sha1>, e.g. dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735, dae86e
29           The full SHA-1 object name (40-byte hexadecimal string), or a
30           leading substring that is unique within the repository. E.g.
31           dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735 and dae86e both name the
32           same commit object if there is no other object in your repository
33           whose object name starts with dae86e.
34
35       <describeOutput>, e.g. v1.7.4.2-679-g3bee7fb
36           Output from git describe; i.e. a closest tag, optionally followed
37           by a dash and a number of commits, followed by a dash, a g, and an
38           abbreviated object name.
39
40       <refname>, e.g. master, heads/master, refs/heads/master
41           A symbolic ref name. E.g.  master typically means the commit object
42           referenced by refs/heads/master. If you happen to have both
43           heads/master and tags/master, you can explicitly say heads/master
44           to tell Git which one you mean. When ambiguous, a <refname> is
45           disambiguated by taking the first match in the following rules:
46
47            1. If $GIT_DIR/<refname> exists, that is what you mean (this is
48               usually useful only for HEAD, FETCH_HEAD, ORIG_HEAD, MERGE_HEAD
49               and CHERRY_PICK_HEAD);
50
51            2. otherwise, refs/<refname> if it exists;
52
53            3. otherwise, refs/tags/<refname> if it exists;
54
55            4. otherwise, refs/heads/<refname> if it exists;
56
57            5. otherwise, refs/remotes/<refname> if it exists;
58
59            6. otherwise, refs/remotes/<refname>/HEAD if it exists.
60
61               HEAD names the commit on which you based the changes in the
62               working tree.  FETCH_HEAD records the branch which you fetched
63               from a remote repository with your last git fetch invocation.
64               ORIG_HEAD is created by commands that move your HEAD in a
65               drastic way, to record the position of the HEAD before their
66               operation, so that you can easily change the tip of the branch
67               back to the state before you ran them.  MERGE_HEAD records the
68               commit(s) which you are merging into your branch when you run
69               git merge.  CHERRY_PICK_HEAD records the commit which you are
70               cherry-picking when you run git cherry-pick.
71
72               Note that any of the refs/* cases above may come either from
73               the $GIT_DIR/refs directory or from the $GIT_DIR/packed-refs
74               file. While the ref name encoding is unspecified, UTF-8 is
75               preferred as some output processing may assume ref names in
76               UTF-8.
77
78       <refname>@{<date>}, e.g. master@{yesterday}, HEAD@{5 minutes ago}
79           A ref followed by the suffix @ with a date specification enclosed
80           in a brace pair (e.g.  {yesterday}, {1 month 2 weeks 3 days 1 hour
81           1 second ago} or {1979-02-26 18:30:00}) specifies the value of the
82           ref at a prior point in time. This suffix may only be used
83           immediately following a ref name and the ref must have an existing
84           log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>). Note that this looks up the state of
85           your local ref at a given time; e.g., what was in your local master
86           branch last week. If you want to look at commits made during
87           certain times, see --since and --until.
88
89       <refname>@{<n>}, e.g. master@{1}
90           A ref followed by the suffix @ with an ordinal specification
91           enclosed in a brace pair (e.g.  {1}, {15}) specifies the n-th prior
92           value of that ref. For example master@{1} is the immediate prior
93           value of master while master@{5} is the 5th prior value of master.
94           This suffix may only be used immediately following a ref name and
95           the ref must have an existing log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<refname>).
96
97       @{<n>}, e.g. @{1}
98           You can use the @ construct with an empty ref part to get at a
99           reflog entry of the current branch. For example, if you are on
100           branch blabla then @{1} means the same as blabla@{1}.
101
102       @{-<n>}, e.g. @{-1}
103           The construct @{-<n>} means the <n>th branch checked out before the
104           current one.
105
106       <branchname>@{upstream}, e.g. master@{upstream}, @{u}
107           The suffix @{upstream} to a branchname (short form
108           <branchname>@{u}) refers to the branch that the branch specified by
109           branchname is set to build on top of. A missing branchname defaults
110           to the current one.
111
112       <rev>^, e.g. HEAD^, v1.5.1^0
113           A suffix ^ to a revision parameter means the first parent of that
114           commit object.  ^<n> means the <n>th parent (i.e.  <rev>^ is
115           equivalent to <rev>^1). As a special rule, <rev>^0 means the commit
116           itself and is used when <rev> is the object name of a tag object
117           that refers to a commit object.
118
119       <rev>~<n>, e.g. master~3
120           A suffix ~<n> to a revision parameter means the commit object that
121           is the <n>th generation ancestor of the named commit object,
122           following only the first parents. I.e.  <rev>~3 is equivalent to
123           <rev>^^^ which is equivalent to <rev>^1^1^1. See below for an
124           illustration of the usage of this form.
125
126       <rev>^{<type>}, e.g. v0.99.8^{commit}
127           A suffix ^ followed by an object type name enclosed in brace pair
128           means the object could be a tag, and dereference the tag
129           recursively until an object of that type is found or the object
130           cannot be dereferenced anymore (in which case, barf).  <rev>^0 is a
131           short-hand for <rev>^{commit}.
132
133           rev^{object} can be used to make sure rev names an object that
134           exists, without requiring rev to be a tag, and without
135           dereferencing rev; because a tag is already an object, it does not
136           have to be dereferenced even once to get to an object.
137
138       <rev>^{}, e.g. v0.99.8^{}
139           A suffix ^ followed by an empty brace pair means the object could
140           be a tag, and dereference the tag recursively until a non-tag
141           object is found.
142
143       <rev>^{/<text>}, e.g. HEAD^{/fix nasty bug}
144           A suffix ^ to a revision parameter, followed by a brace pair that
145           contains a text led by a slash, is the same as the :/fix nasty bug
146           syntax below except that it returns the youngest matching commit
147           which is reachable from the <rev> before ^.
148
149       :/<text>, e.g. :/fix nasty bug
150           A colon, followed by a slash, followed by a text, names a commit
151           whose commit message matches the specified regular expression. This
152           name returns the youngest matching commit which is reachable from
153           any ref. If the commit message starts with a !  you have to repeat
154           that; the special sequence :/!, followed by something else than !,
155           is reserved for now. The regular expression can match any part of
156           the commit message. To match messages starting with a string, one
157           can use e.g.  :/^foo.
158
159       <rev>:<path>, e.g. HEAD:README, :README, master:./README
160           A suffix : followed by a path names the blob or tree at the given
161           path in the tree-ish object named by the part before the colon.
162           :path (with an empty part before the colon) is a special case of
163           the syntax described next: content recorded in the index at the
164           given path. A path starting with ./ or ../ is relative to the
165           current working directory. The given path will be converted to be
166           relative to the working tree’s root directory. This is most useful
167           to address a blob or tree from a commit or tree that has the same
168           tree structure as the working tree.
169
170       :<n>:<path>, e.g. :0:README, :README
171           A colon, optionally followed by a stage number (0 to 3) and a
172           colon, followed by a path, names a blob object in the index at the
173           given path. A missing stage number (and the colon that follows it)
174           names a stage 0 entry. During a merge, stage 1 is the common
175           ancestor, stage 2 is the target branch’s version (typically the
176           current branch), and stage 3 is the version from the branch which
177           is being merged.
178
179       Here is an illustration, by Jon Loeliger. Both commit nodes B and C are
180       parents of commit node A. Parent commits are ordered left-to-right.
181
182           G   H   I   J
183            \ /     \ /
184             D   E   F
185              \  |  / \
186               \ | /   |
187                \|/    |
188                 B     C
189                  \   /
190                   \ /
191                    A
192
193           A =      = A^0
194           B = A^   = A^1     = A~1
195           C = A^2  = A^2
196           D = A^^  = A^1^1   = A~2
197           E = B^2  = A^^2
198           F = B^3  = A^^3
199           G = A^^^ = A^1^1^1 = A~3
200           H = D^2  = B^^2    = A^^^2  = A~2^2
201           I = F^   = B^3^    = A^^3^
202           J = F^2  = B^3^2   = A^^3^2
203

SPECIFYING RANGES

205       History traversing commands such as git log operate on a set of
206       commits, not just a single commit. To these commands, specifying a
207       single revision with the notation described in the previous section
208       means the set of commits reachable from that commit, following the
209       commit ancestry chain.
210
211       To exclude commits reachable from a commit, a prefix ^ notation is
212       used. E.g. ^r1 r2 means commits reachable from r2 but exclude the ones
213       reachable from r1.
214
215       This set operation appears so often that there is a shorthand for it.
216       When you have two commits r1 and r2 (named according to the syntax
217       explained in SPECIFYING REVISIONS above), you can ask for commits that
218       are reachable from r2 excluding those that are reachable from r1 by ^r1
219       r2 and it can be written as r1..r2.
220
221       A similar notation r1...r2 is called symmetric difference of r1 and r2
222       and is defined as r1 r2 --not $(git merge-base --all r1 r2). It is the
223       set of commits that are reachable from either one of r1 or r2 but not
224       from both.
225
226       In these two shorthands, you can omit one end and let it default to
227       HEAD. For example, origin.. is a shorthand for origin..HEAD and asks
228       "What did I do since I forked from the origin branch?" Similarly,
229       ..origin is a shorthand for HEAD..origin and asks "What did the origin
230       do since I forked from them?" Note that .. would mean HEAD..HEAD which
231       is an empty range that is both reachable and unreachable from HEAD.
232
233       Two other shorthands for naming a set that is formed by a commit and
234       its parent commits exist. The r1^@ notation means all parents of r1.
235       r1^! includes commit r1 but excludes all of its parents.
236
237       To summarize:
238
239       <rev>
240           Include commits that are reachable from (i.e. ancestors of) <rev>.
241
242       ^<rev>
243           Exclude commits that are reachable from (i.e. ancestors of) <rev>.
244
245       <rev1>..<rev2>
246           Include commits that are reachable from <rev2> but exclude those
247           that are reachable from <rev1>. When either <rev1> or <rev2> is
248           omitted, it defaults to HEAD.
249
250       <rev1>...<rev2>
251           Include commits that are reachable from either <rev1> or <rev2> but
252           exclude those that are reachable from both. When either <rev1> or
253           <rev2> is omitted, it defaults to HEAD.
254
255       <rev>^@, e.g. HEAD^@
256           A suffix ^ followed by an at sign is the same as listing all
257           parents of <rev> (meaning, include anything reachable from its
258           parents, but not the commit itself).
259
260       <rev>^!, e.g. HEAD^!
261           A suffix ^ followed by an exclamation mark is the same as giving
262           commit <rev> and then all its parents prefixed with ^ to exclude
263           them (and their ancestors).
264
265       Here are a handful of examples:
266
267           D                G H D
268           D F              G H I J D F
269           ^G D             H D
270           ^D B             E I J F B
271           B..C             C
272           B...C            G H D E B C
273           ^D B C           E I J F B C
274           C                I J F C
275           C^@              I J F
276           C^!              C
277           F^! D            G H D F
278

SEE ALSO

280       git-rev-parse(1)
281

GIT

283       Part of the git(1) suite
284
285
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287Git 1.8.3.1                       11/19/2018                   GITREVISIONS(7)
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