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

6       gitrevisions - Specifying revisions and ranges for Git
7

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 are
15       reachable from that commit. For commands that walk the revision graph
16       one can also specify a range of revisions explicitly.
17
18       In addition, some Git commands (such as git-show(1) and git-push(1))
19       can also take revision parameters which denote other objects than
20       commits, e.g. blobs ("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           Note
29           This document shows the "raw" syntax as seen by git. The shell and
30           other UIs might require additional quoting to protect special
31           characters and to avoid word splitting.
32
33       <sha1>, e.g. dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735, dae86e
34           The full SHA-1 object name (40-byte hexadecimal string), or a
35           leading substring that is unique within the repository. E.g.
36           dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735 and dae86e both name the
37           same commit object if there is no other object in your repository
38           whose object name starts with dae86e.
39
40       <describeOutput>, e.g. v1.7.4.2-679-g3bee7fb
41           Output from git describe; i.e. a closest tag, optionally followed
42           by a dash and a number of commits, followed by a dash, a g, and an
43           abbreviated object name.
44
45       <refname>, e.g. master, heads/master, refs/heads/master
46           A symbolic ref name. E.g.  master typically means the commit object
47           referenced by refs/heads/master. If you happen to have both
48           heads/master and tags/master, you can explicitly say heads/master
49           to tell Git which one you mean. When ambiguous, a <refname> is
50           disambiguated by taking the first match in the following rules:
51
52            1. If $GIT_DIR/<refname> exists, that is what you mean (this is
53               usually useful only for HEAD, FETCH_HEAD, ORIG_HEAD, MERGE_HEAD
54               and CHERRY_PICK_HEAD);
55
56            2. otherwise, refs/<refname> if it exists;
57
58            3. otherwise, refs/tags/<refname> if it exists;
59
60            4. otherwise, refs/heads/<refname> if it exists;
61
62            5. otherwise, refs/remotes/<refname> if it exists;
63
64            6. otherwise, refs/remotes/<refname>/HEAD if it exists.
65
66               HEAD names the commit on which you based the changes in the
67               working tree.  FETCH_HEAD records the branch which you fetched
68               from a remote repository with your last git fetch invocation.
69               ORIG_HEAD is created by commands that move your HEAD in a
70               drastic way, to record the position of the HEAD before their
71               operation, so that you can easily change the tip of the branch
72               back to the state before you ran them.  MERGE_HEAD records the
73               commit(s) which you are merging into your branch when you run
74               git merge.  CHERRY_PICK_HEAD records the commit which you are
75               cherry-picking when you run git cherry-pick.
76
77               Note that any of the refs/* cases above may come either from
78               the $GIT_DIR/refs directory or from the $GIT_DIR/packed-refs
79               file. While the ref name encoding is unspecified, UTF-8 is
80               preferred as some output processing may assume ref names in
81               UTF-8.
82
83       @
84           @ alone is a shortcut for HEAD.
85
86       [<refname>]@{<date>}, e.g. master@{yesterday}, HEAD@{5 minutes ago}
87           A ref followed by the suffix @ with a date specification enclosed
88           in a brace pair (e.g.  {yesterday}, {1 month 2 weeks 3 days 1 hour
89           1 second ago} or {1979-02-26 18:30:00}) specifies the value of the
90           ref at a prior point in time. This suffix may only be used
91           immediately following a ref name and the ref must have an existing
92           log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>). Note that this looks up the state of
93           your local ref at a given time; e.g., what was in your local master
94           branch last week. If you want to look at commits made during
95           certain times, see --since and --until.
96
97       <refname>@{<n>}, e.g. master@{1}
98           A ref followed by the suffix @ with an ordinal specification
99           enclosed in a brace pair (e.g.  {1}, {15}) specifies the n-th prior
100           value of that ref. For example master@{1} is the immediate prior
101           value of master while master@{5} is the 5th prior value of master.
102           This suffix may only be used immediately following a ref name and
103           the ref must have an existing log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<refname>).
104
105       @{<n>}, e.g. @{1}
106           You can use the @ construct with an empty ref part to get at a
107           reflog entry of the current branch. For example, if you are on
108           branch blabla then @{1} means the same as blabla@{1}.
109
110       @{-<n>}, e.g. @{-1}
111           The construct @{-<n>} means the <n>th branch/commit checked out
112           before the current one.
113
114       [<branchname>]@{upstream}, e.g. master@{upstream}, @{u}
115           The suffix @{upstream} to a branchname (short form
116           <branchname>@{u}) refers to the branch that the branch specified by
117           branchname is set to build on top of (configured with
118           branch.<name>.remote and branch.<name>.merge). A missing branchname
119           defaults to the current one. These suffixes are also accepted when
120           spelled in uppercase, and they mean the same thing no matter the
121           case.
122
123       [<branchname>]@{push}, e.g. master@{push}, @{push}
124           The suffix @{push} reports the branch "where we would push to" if
125           git push were run while branchname was checked out (or the current
126           HEAD if no branchname is specified). Since our push destination is
127           in a remote repository, of course, we report the local tracking
128           branch that corresponds to that branch (i.e., something in
129           refs/remotes/).
130
131           Here’s an example to make it more clear:
132
133               $ git config push.default current
134               $ git config remote.pushdefault myfork
135               $ git switch -c mybranch origin/master
136
137               $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name @{upstream}
138               refs/remotes/origin/master
139
140               $ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name @{push}
141               refs/remotes/myfork/mybranch
142
143           Note in the example that we set up a triangular workflow, where we
144           pull from one location and push to another. In a non-triangular
145           workflow, @{push} is the same as @{upstream}, and there is no need
146           for it.
147
148           This suffix is also accepted when spelled in uppercase, and means
149           the same thing no matter the case.
150
151       <rev>^[<n>], e.g. HEAD^, v1.5.1^0
152           A suffix ^ to a revision parameter means the first parent of that
153           commit object.  ^<n> means the <n>th parent (i.e.  <rev>^ is
154           equivalent to <rev>^1). As a special rule, <rev>^0 means the commit
155           itself and is used when <rev> is the object name of a tag object
156           that refers to a commit object.
157
158       <rev>~[<n>], e.g. HEAD~, master~3
159           A suffix ~ to a revision parameter means the first parent of that
160           commit object. A suffix ~<n> to a revision parameter means the
161           commit object that is the <n>th generation ancestor of the named
162           commit object, following only the first parents. I.e.  <rev>~3 is
163           equivalent to <rev>^^^ which is equivalent to <rev>^1^1^1. See
164           below for an illustration of the usage of this form.
165
166       <rev>^{<type>}, e.g. v0.99.8^{commit}
167           A suffix ^ followed by an object type name enclosed in brace pair
168           means dereference the object at <rev> recursively until an object
169           of type <type> is found or the object cannot be dereferenced
170           anymore (in which case, barf). For example, if <rev> is a
171           commit-ish, <rev>^{commit} describes the corresponding commit
172           object. Similarly, if <rev> is a tree-ish, <rev>^{tree} describes
173           the corresponding tree object.  <rev>^0 is a short-hand for
174           <rev>^{commit}.
175
176           <rev>^{object} can be used to make sure <rev> names an object that
177           exists, without requiring <rev> to be a tag, and without
178           dereferencing <rev>; because a tag is already an object, it does
179           not have to be dereferenced even once to get to an object.
180
181           <rev>^{tag} can be used to ensure that <rev> identifies an existing
182           tag object.
183
184       <rev>^{}, e.g. v0.99.8^{}
185           A suffix ^ followed by an empty brace pair means the object could
186           be a tag, and dereference the tag recursively until a non-tag
187           object is found.
188
189       <rev>^{/<text>}, e.g. HEAD^{/fix nasty bug}
190           A suffix ^ to a revision parameter, followed by a brace pair that
191           contains a text led by a slash, is the same as the :/fix nasty bug
192           syntax below except that it returns the youngest matching commit
193           which is reachable from the <rev> before ^.
194
195       :/<text>, e.g. :/fix nasty bug
196           A colon, followed by a slash, followed by a text, names a commit
197           whose commit message matches the specified regular expression. This
198           name returns the youngest matching commit which is reachable from
199           any ref, including HEAD. The regular expression can match any part
200           of the commit message. To match messages starting with a string,
201           one can use e.g.  :/^foo. The special sequence :/!  is reserved for
202           modifiers to what is matched.  :/!-foo performs a negative match,
203           while :/!!foo matches a literal !  character, followed by foo. Any
204           other sequence beginning with :/!  is reserved for now. Depending
205           on the given text, the shell’s word splitting rules might require
206           additional quoting.
207
208       <rev>:<path>, e.g. HEAD:README, master:./README
209           A suffix : followed by a path names the blob or tree at the given
210           path in the tree-ish object named by the part before the colon. A
211           path starting with ./ or ../ is relative to the current working
212           directory. The given path will be converted to be relative to the
213           working tree’s root directory. This is most useful to address a
214           blob or tree from a commit or tree that has the same tree structure
215           as the working tree.
216
217       :[<n>:]<path>, e.g. :0:README, :README
218           A colon, optionally followed by a stage number (0 to 3) and a
219           colon, followed by a path, names a blob object in the index at the
220           given path. A missing stage number (and the colon that follows it)
221           names a stage 0 entry. During a merge, stage 1 is the common
222           ancestor, stage 2 is the target branch’s version (typically the
223           current branch), and stage 3 is the version from the branch which
224           is being merged.
225
226       Here is an illustration, by Jon Loeliger. Both commit nodes B and C are
227       parents of commit node A. Parent commits are ordered left-to-right.
228
229           G   H   I   J
230            \ /     \ /
231             D   E   F
232              \  |  / \
233               \ | /   |
234                \|/    |
235                 B     C
236                  \   /
237                   \ /
238                    A
239
240           A =      = A^0
241           B = A^   = A^1     = A~1
242           C =      = A^2
243           D = A^^  = A^1^1   = A~2
244           E = B^2  = A^^2
245           F = B^3  = A^^3
246           G = A^^^ = A^1^1^1 = A~3
247           H = D^2  = B^^2    = A^^^2  = A~2^2
248           I = F^   = B^3^    = A^^3^
249           J = F^2  = B^3^2   = A^^3^2
250

SPECIFYING RANGES

252       History traversing commands such as git log operate on a set of
253       commits, not just a single commit.
254
255       For these commands, specifying a single revision, using the notation
256       described in the previous section, means the set of commits reachable
257       from the given commit.
258
259       Specifying several revisions means the set of commits reachable from
260       any of the given commits.
261
262       A commit’s reachable set is the commit itself and the commits in its
263       ancestry chain.
264
265   Commit Exclusions
266       ^<rev> (caret) Notation
267           To exclude commits reachable from a commit, a prefix ^ notation is
268           used. E.g.  ^r1 r2 means commits reachable from r2 but exclude the
269           ones reachable from r1 (i.e.  r1 and its ancestors).
270
271   Dotted Range Notations
272       The .. (two-dot) Range Notation
273           The ^r1 r2 set operation appears so often that there is a shorthand
274           for it. When you have two commits r1 and r2 (named according to the
275           syntax explained in SPECIFYING REVISIONS above), you can ask for
276           commits that are reachable from r2 excluding those that are
277           reachable from r1 by ^r1 r2 and it can be written as r1..r2.
278
279       The ... (three-dot) Symmetric Difference Notation
280           A similar notation r1...r2 is called symmetric difference of r1 and
281           r2 and is defined as r1 r2 --not $(git merge-base --all r1 r2). It
282           is the set of commits that are reachable from either one of r1
283           (left side) or r2 (right side) but not from both.
284
285       In these two shorthand notations, you can omit one end and let it
286       default to HEAD. For example, origin.. is a shorthand for origin..HEAD
287       and asks "What did I do since I forked from the origin branch?"
288       Similarly, ..origin is a shorthand for HEAD..origin and asks "What did
289       the origin do since I forked from them?" Note that .. would mean
290       HEAD..HEAD which is an empty range that is both reachable and
291       unreachable from HEAD.
292
293   Other <rev>^ Parent Shorthand Notations
294       Three other shorthands exist, particularly useful for merge commits,
295       for naming a set that is formed by a commit and its parent commits.
296
297       The r1^@ notation means all parents of r1.
298
299       The r1^! notation includes commit r1 but excludes all of its parents.
300       By itself, this notation denotes the single commit r1.
301
302       The <rev>^-[<n>] notation includes <rev> but excludes the <n>th parent
303       (i.e. a shorthand for <rev>^<n>..<rev>), with <n> = 1 if not given.
304       This is typically useful for merge commits where you can just pass
305       <commit>^- to get all the commits in the branch that was merged in
306       merge commit <commit> (including <commit> itself).
307
308       While <rev>^<n> was about specifying a single commit parent, these
309       three notations also consider its parents. For example you can say
310       HEAD^2^@, however you cannot say HEAD^@^2.
311

REVISION RANGE SUMMARY

313       <rev>
314           Include commits that are reachable from <rev> (i.e. <rev> and its
315           ancestors).
316
317       ^<rev>
318           Exclude commits that are reachable from <rev> (i.e. <rev> and its
319           ancestors).
320
321       <rev1>..<rev2>
322           Include commits that are reachable from <rev2> but exclude those
323           that are reachable from <rev1>. When either <rev1> or <rev2> is
324           omitted, it defaults to HEAD.
325
326       <rev1>...<rev2>
327           Include commits that are reachable from either <rev1> or <rev2> but
328           exclude those that are reachable from both. When either <rev1> or
329           <rev2> is omitted, it defaults to HEAD.
330
331       <rev>^@, e.g. HEAD^@
332           A suffix ^ followed by an at sign is the same as listing all
333           parents of <rev> (meaning, include anything reachable from its
334           parents, but not the commit itself).
335
336       <rev>^!, e.g. HEAD^!
337           A suffix ^ followed by an exclamation mark is the same as giving
338           commit <rev> and then all its parents prefixed with ^ to exclude
339           them (and their ancestors).
340
341       <rev>^-<n>, e.g. HEAD^-, HEAD^-2
342           Equivalent to <rev>^<n>..<rev>, with <n> = 1 if not given.
343
344       Here are a handful of examples using the Loeliger illustration above,
345       with each step in the notation’s expansion and selection carefully
346       spelt out:
347
348              Args   Expanded arguments    Selected commits
349              D                            G H D
350              D F                          G H I J D F
351              ^G D                         H D
352              ^D B                         E I J F B
353              ^D B C                       E I J F B C
354              C                            I J F C
355              B..C   = ^B C                C
356              B...C  = B ^F C              G H D E B C
357              B^-    = B^..B
358                     = ^B^1 B              E I J F B
359              C^@    = C^1
360                     = F                   I J F
361              B^@    = B^1 B^2 B^3
362                     = D E F               D G H E F I J
363              C^!    = C ^C^@
364                     = C ^C^1
365                     = C ^F                C
366              B^!    = B ^B^@
367                     = B ^B^1 ^B^2 ^B^3
368                     = B ^D ^E ^F          B
369              F^! D  = F ^I ^J D           G H D F
370

SEE ALSO

372       git-rev-parse(1)
373

GIT

375       Part of the git(1) suite
376
377
378
379Git 2.30.2                        2021-03-08                   GITREVISIONS(7)
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