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 are
reachable from that commit. For commands that walk the revision graph
one can also specify a range of revisions explicitly.

In addition, some Git commands (such as git-show(1) and git-push(1))
can 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.

Note

This document shows the "raw" syntax as seen by git. The shell
and other UIs might require additional quoting to protect special
characters and to avoid word splitting.

<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, REBASE_HEAD, REVERT_HEAD, CHERRY_PICK_HEAD,
BISECT_HEAD and AUTO_MERGE);

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 (git am, git merge, git rebase, git reset), 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.

REBASE_HEAD
during a rebase, records the commit at which the
operation is currently stopped, either because of
conflicts or an edit command in an interactive rebase.

REVERT_HEAD
records the commit which you are reverting when you run
git revert.

CHERRY_PICK_HEAD
records the commit which you are cherry-picking when you
run git cherry-pick.

BISECT_HEAD
records the current commit to be tested when you run git
bisect --no-checkout.

AUTO_MERGE
records a tree object corresponding to the state the ort
merge strategy wrote to the working tree when a merge
operation resulted in conflicts.

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 output processing may assume ref names in UTF-8.

@
@ alone is a shortcut for HEAD.

[<refname>]@{<date>}, e.g. master@{yesterday}, HEAD@{5 minutes ago}
A ref followed by the suffix @ with a date specification enclosed
in a brace pair (e.g. {yesterday}, {1 month 2 weeks 3 days 1
hour 1 second ago} or {1979-02-26 18:30:00}) specifies the value
of the ref at a prior point in time. This suffix may only be used
immediately following a ref name and the ref must have an
existing log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>). Note that this looks up the
state of your local ref at a given time; e.g., what was in your
local master branch last week. If you want to look at commits
made during certain times, see --since and --until.

<refname>@{<n>}, e.g. master@{1}
A ref followed by the suffix @ with an ordinal specification
enclosed in a brace pair (e.g. {1}, {15}) 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/commit checked out
before the current one.

[<branchname>]@{upstream}, e.g. master@{upstream}, @{u}
A branch B may be set up to build on top of a branch X
(configured with branch.<name>.merge) at a remote R (configured
with branch.<name>.remote). B@{u} refers to the remote-tracking
branch for the branch X taken from remote R, typically found at
refs/remotes/R/X.

[<branchname>]@{push}, e.g. master@{push}, @{push}
The suffix @{push} reports the branch "where we would push to" if
git push were run while branchname was checked out (or the
current HEAD if no branchname is specified). Like for
@{upstream}, we report the remote-tracking branch that
corresponds to that branch at the remote.

Here's an example to make it more clear:

$ git config push.default current
$ git config remote.pushdefault myfork
$ git switch -c mybranch origin/master

$ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name @{upstream}
refs/remotes/origin/master

$ git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name @{push}
refs/remotes/myfork/mybranch

Note in the example that we set up a triangular workflow, where
we pull from one location and push to another. In a
non-triangular workflow, @{push} is the same as @{upstream}, and
there is no need for it.

This suffix is also accepted when spelled in uppercase, and means
the same thing no matter the case.

<rev>^[<n>], 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. HEAD~, master~3
A suffix ~ to a revision parameter means the first parent of that
commit object. 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 dereference the object at <rev> recursively until an object
of type <type> is found or the object cannot be dereferenced
anymore (in which case, barf). For example, if <rev> is a
commit-ish, <rev>^{commit} describes the corresponding commit
object. Similarly, if <rev> is a tree-ish, <rev>^{tree} describes
the corresponding tree object. <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>^{tag} can be used to ensure that <rev> identifies an
existing tag 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, including HEAD. The regular expression can match
any part of the commit message. To match messages starting with a
string, one can use e.g. :/^foo. The special sequence :/! is
reserved for modifiers to what is matched. :/!-foo performs a
negative match, while :/!!foo matches a literal ! character,
followed by foo. Any other sequence beginning with :/! is
reserved for now. Depending on the given text, the shell's word
splitting rules might require additional quoting.

<rev>:<path>, e.g. HEAD: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. A
path starting with ./ or ../ is relative to the current working
directory. The given path will be converted to be relative to the
working tree's root directory. This is most useful to address a
blob or tree from a commit or tree that has the same tree
structure as the working tree.

:[<n>:]<path>, e.g. :0:README, :README
A colon, optionally followed by a stage number (0 to 3) and a
colon, followed by a path, names a blob object in the index at
the given path. A missing stage number (and the colon that
follows it) names a stage 0 entry. During a merge, stage 1 is the
common ancestor, stage 2 is the target branch's version
(typically the current branch), and stage 3 is the version from
the branch which is being merged.

Here is an illustration, by Jon Loeliger. Both commit nodes B and C
are parents of commit node A. Parent commits are ordered
left-to-right.

G H I J
\ / \ /
D E F
\ | / \
\ | / |
\|/ |
B C
\ /
\ /
A

A = = A^0
B = A^ = A^1 = A~1
C = = 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.

For these commands, specifying a single revision, using the notation
described in the previous section, means the set of commits reachable
from the given commit.

Specifying several revisions means the set of commits reachable from
any of the given commits.

A commit's reachable set is the commit itself and the commits in its
ancestry chain.

There are several notations to specify a set of connected commits
(called a "revision range"), illustrated below.

Commit Exclusions

^<rev> (caret) Notation
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 (i.e. r1 and its ancestors).

Dotted Range Notations

The .. (two-dot) Range Notation
The ^r1 r2 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.

The ... (three-dot) Symmetric Difference Notation
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 (left side) or r2 (right side) but not from both.

In these two shorthand notations, 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.

Commands that are specifically designed to take two distinct ranges
(e.g. "git range-diff R1 R2" to compare two ranges) do exist, but
they are exceptions. Unless otherwise noted, all "git" commands that
operate on a set of commits work on a single revision range. In other
words, writing two "two-dot range notation" next to each other, e.g.

$ git log A..B C..D

does not specify two revision ranges for most commands. Instead it
will name a single connected set of commits, i.e. those that are
reachable from either B or D but are reachable from neither A or C.
In a linear history like this:

---A---B---o---o---C---D

because A and B are reachable from C, the revision range specified by
these two dotted ranges is a single commit D.

Other <rev>^ Parent Shorthand Notations
Three other shorthands exist, particularly useful for merge commits,
for naming a set that is formed by a commit and its parent commits.

The r1^@ notation means all parents of r1.

The r1^! notation includes commit r1 but excludes all of its parents.
By itself, this notation denotes the single commit r1.

The <rev>^-[<n>] notation includes <rev> but excludes the <n>th
parent (i.e. a shorthand for <rev>^<n>..<rev>), with <n> = 1 if not
given. This is typically useful for merge commits where you can just
pass <commit>^- to get all the commits in the branch that was merged
in merge commit <commit> (including <commit> itself).

While <rev>^<n> was about specifying a single commit parent, these
three notations also consider its parents. For example you can say
HEAD^2^@, however you cannot say HEAD^@^2.

REVISION RANGE SUMMARY

<rev>
Include commits that are reachable from <rev> (i.e. <rev> and its
ancestors).

^<rev>
Exclude commits that are reachable from <rev> (i.e. <rev> and its
ancestors).

<rev1>..<rev2>
Include commits that are reachable from <rev2> but exclude those
that are reachable from <rev1>. When either <rev1> or <rev2> is
omitted, it defaults to HEAD.

<rev1>...<rev2>
Include commits that are reachable from either <rev1> or <rev2>
but exclude those that are reachable from both. When either
<rev1> or <rev2> is omitted, it defaults to HEAD.

<rev>^@, e.g. HEAD^@
A suffix ^ followed by an at sign is the same as listing all
parents of <rev> (meaning, include anything reachable from its
parents, but not the commit itself).

<rev>^!, e.g. HEAD^!
A suffix ^ followed by an exclamation mark is the same as giving
commit <rev> and all its parents prefixed with ^ to exclude them
(and their ancestors).

<rev>^-<n>, e.g. HEAD^-, HEAD^-2
Equivalent to <rev>^<n>..<rev>, with <n> = 1 if not given.

Here are a handful of examples using the Loeliger illustration above,
with each step in the notation's expansion and selection carefully
spelt out:

Args Expanded arguments Selected commits
D G H D
D F G H I J D F
^G D H D
^D B E I J F B
^D B C E I J F B C
C I J F C
B..C = ^B C C
B...C = B ^F C G H D E B C
B^- = B^..B
= ^B^1 B E I J F B
C^@ = C^1
= F I J F
B^@ = B^1 B^2 B^3
= D E F D G H E F I J
C^! = C ^C^@
= C ^C^1
= C ^F C
B^! = B ^B^@
= B ^B^1 ^B^2 ^B^3
= B ^D ^E ^F B
F^! D = F ^I ^J D G H D F

SEE ALSO

git-rev-parse(1)

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GITREVISIONS(7)