What's the difference between tilde(~) and caret(^) in package.json?

Question

After I upgraded to latest stable node and npm, I tried npm install moment --save. It saves the entry in the package.json

Answer 1

^ is 1.[any].[any] (latest minor version)
~ is 1.2.[any] (latest patch)

A great read is this blog post on how semver applies to npm
and what they're doing to make it match the semver standard
http://blog.npmjs.org/post/98131109725/npm-2-0-0