What does the caret (^) character mean?

Question

I saw an answer to a question here that helps restore a deleted file in git.

The solution was

git checkout ^ -- 

        

Answer 1

The ^ (caret) can also be used when specifying ranges.

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.

Include commits that are reachable from (i.e. ancestors of) .

^

Exclude commits that are reachable from (i.e. ancestors of) .