GITREVISIONS(7) Git Manual GITREVISIONS(7)
NAME
gitrevisions - specifying revisions and ranges for Git
SYNOPSIS
gitrevisions
DESCRIPTION
Many Git commands take revision parameters as arguments. Depending on the command, they denote a specific
commit or, for commands which walk the revision graph (such as git-log(1)), all commits which can be reached
from that commit. In the latter case one can also specify a range of revisions explicitly.
In addition, some Git commands (such as git-show(1)) also take revision parameters which denote other objects
than commits, e.g. blobs ("files") or trees ("directories of files").
SPECIFYING REVISIONS
A revision parameter <rev> typically, but not necessarily, names a commit object. It uses what is called an
extended SHA-1 syntax. Here are various ways to spell object names. The ones listed near the end of this list
name trees and blobs contained in a commit.
<sha1>, e.g. dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735, dae86e
The full SHA-1 object name (40-byte hexadecimal string), or a leading substring that is unique within the
repository. E.g. dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735 and dae86e both name the same commit object if
there is no other object in your repository whose object name starts with dae86e.
<describeOutput>, e.g. v1.7.4.2-679-g3bee7fb
Output from git describe; i.e. a closest tag, optionally followed by a dash and a number of commits,
followed by a dash, a g, and an abbreviated object name.
<refname>, e.g. master, heads/master, refs/heads/master
A symbolic ref name. E.g. master typically means the commit object referenced by refs/heads/master. If
you happen to have both heads/master and tags/master, you can explicitly say heads/master to tell Git
which one you mean. When ambiguous, a <refname> is disambiguated by taking the first match in the
following rules:
1. If $GIT_DIR/<refname> exists, that is what you mean (this is usually useful only for HEAD, FETCH_HEAD,
ORIG_HEAD, MERGE_HEAD and CHERRY_PICK_HEAD);
2. otherwise, refs/<refname> if it exists;
3. otherwise, refs/tags/<refname> if it exists;
4. otherwise, refs/heads/<refname> if it exists;
5. otherwise, refs/remotes/<refname> if it exists;
6. otherwise, refs/remotes/<refname>/HEAD if it exists.
HEAD names the commit on which you based the changes in the working tree. FETCH_HEAD records the
branch which you fetched from a remote repository with your last git fetch invocation. ORIG_HEAD is
created by commands that move your HEAD in a drastic way, to record the position of the HEAD before
their operation, so that you can easily change the tip of the branch back to the state before you ran
them. MERGE_HEAD records the commit(s) which you are merging into your branch when you run git merge.
CHERRY_PICK_HEAD records the commit which you are cherry-picking when you run git cherry-pick.
Note that any of the refs/* cases above may come either from the $GIT_DIR/refs directory or from the
$GIT_DIR/packed-refs file. While the ref name encoding is unspecified, UTF-8 is preferred as some
specifies the n-th prior value of that ref. For example master@{1} is the immediate prior value of master
while master@{5} is the 5th prior value of master. This suffix may only be used immediately following a
ref name and the ref must have an existing log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<refname>).
@{<n>}, e.g. @{1}
You can use the @ construct with an empty ref part to get at a reflog entry of the current branch. For
example, if you are on branch blabla then @{1} means the same as blabla@{1}.
@{-<n>}, e.g. @{-1}
The construct @{-<n>} means the <n>th branch checked out before the current one.
<branchname>@{upstream}, e.g. master@{upstream}, @{u}
The suffix @{upstream} to a branchname (short form <branchname>@{u}) refers to the branch that the branch
specified by branchname is set to build on top of. A missing branchname defaults to the current one.
<rev>^, e.g. HEAD^, v1.5.1^0
A suffix ^ to a revision parameter means the first parent of that commit object. ^<n> means the <n>th
parent (i.e. <rev>^ is equivalent to <rev>^1). As a special rule, <rev>^0 means the commit itself and is
used when <rev> is the object name of a tag object that refers to a commit object.
<rev>~<n>, e.g. master~3
A suffix ~<n> to a revision parameter means the commit object that is the <n>th generation ancestor of the
named commit object, following only the first parents. I.e. <rev>~3 is equivalent to <rev>^^^ which is
equivalent to <rev>^1^1^1. See below for an illustration of the usage of this form.
<rev>^{<type>}, e.g. v0.99.8^{commit}
A suffix ^ followed by an object type name enclosed in brace pair means the object could be a tag, and
dereference the tag recursively until an object of that type is found or the object cannot be dereferenced
anymore (in which case, barf). <rev>^0 is a short-hand for <rev>^{commit}.
rev^{object} can be used to make sure rev names an object that exists, without requiring rev to be a tag,
and without dereferencing rev; because a tag is already an object, it does not have to be dereferenced
even once to get to an object.
<rev>^{}, e.g. v0.99.8^{}
A suffix ^ followed by an empty brace pair means the object could be a tag, and dereference the tag
recursively until a non-tag object is found.
<rev>^{/<text>}, e.g. HEAD^{/fix nasty bug}
A suffix ^ to a revision parameter, followed by a brace pair that contains a text led by a slash, is the
same as the :/fix nasty bug syntax below except that it returns the youngest matching commit which is
reachable from the <rev> before ^.
:/<text>, e.g. :/fix nasty bug
A colon, followed by a slash, followed by a text, names a commit whose commit message matches the
specified regular expression. This name returns the youngest matching commit which is reachable from any
ref. If the commit message starts with a ! you have to repeat that; the special sequence :/!, followed by
something else than !, is reserved for now. The regular expression can match any part of the commit
message. To match messages starting with a string, one can use e.g. :/^foo.
<rev>:<path>, e.g. HEAD:README, :README, master:./README
A suffix : followed by a path names the blob or tree at the given path in the tree-ish object named by the
part before the colon. :path (with an empty part before the colon) is a special case of the syntax
described next: content recorded in the index at the given path. A path starting with ./ or ../ is
G H I J
\ / \ /
D E F
\ | / \
\ | / |
\|/ |
B C
\ /
\ /
A
A = = A^0
B = A^ = A^1 = A~1
C = A^2 = A^2
D = A^^ = A^1^1 = A~2
E = B^2 = A^^2
F = B^3 = A^^3
G = A^^^ = A^1^1^1 = A~3
H = D^2 = B^^2 = A^^^2 = A~2^2
I = F^ = B^3^ = A^^3^
J = F^2 = B^3^2 = A^^3^2
SPECIFYING RANGES
History traversing commands such as git log operate on a set of commits, not just a single commit. To these
commands, specifying a single revision with the notation described in the previous section means the set of
commits reachable from that commit, following the commit ancestry chain.
To exclude commits reachable from a commit, a prefix ^ notation is used. E.g. ^r1 r2 means commits reachable
from r2 but exclude the ones reachable from r1.
This set operation appears so often that there is a shorthand for it. When you have two commits r1 and r2
(named according to the syntax explained in SPECIFYING REVISIONS above), you can ask for commits that are
reachable from r2 excluding those that are reachable from r1 by ^r1 r2 and it can be written as r1..r2.
A similar notation r1...r2 is called symmetric difference of r1 and r2 and is defined as r1 r2 --not $(git
merge-base --all r1 r2). It is the set of commits that are reachable from either one of r1 or r2 but not from
both.
In these two shorthands, you can omit one end and let it default to HEAD. For example, origin.. is a shorthand
for origin..HEAD and asks "What did I do since I forked from the origin branch?" Similarly, ..origin is a
shorthand for HEAD..origin and asks "What did the origin do since I forked from them?" Note that .. would mean
HEAD..HEAD which is an empty range that is both reachable and unreachable from HEAD.
Two other shorthands for naming a set that is formed by a commit and its parent commits exist. The r1^@
notation means all parents of r1. r1^! includes commit r1 but excludes all of its parents.
To summarize:
<rev>
Include commits that are reachable from (i.e. ancestors of) <rev>.
^<rev>
Exclude commits that are reachable from (i.e. ancestors of) <rev>.
<rev>^!, e.g. HEAD^!
A suffix ^ followed by an exclamation mark is the same as giving commit <rev> and then all its parents
prefixed with ^ to exclude them (and their ancestors).
Here are a handful of examples:
D G H D
D F G H I J D F
^G D H D
^D B E I J F B
B..C C
B...C G H D E B C
^D B C E I J F B C
C I J F C
C^@ I J F
C^! C
F^! D G H D F
SEE ALSO
git-rev-parse(1)
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 1.8.3.1 03/23/2016 GITREVISIONS(7)
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