What's the difference between HEAD^ and HEAD~ in Git?

Question

When I specify an ancestor commit object in Git, I\'m confused between HEAD^ and HEAD~.

Both have a \"numbered\" version like HEAD^3<

Answer 1

TLDR

~ is what you want most of the time, it references past commits to the current branch

^ references parents (git-merge creates a 2nd parent or more)

A~ is always the same as A^
A~~ is always the same as A^^, and so on
A~2 is not the same as A^2 however,
because ~2 is shorthand for ~~
while ^2 is not shorthand for anything, it means the 2nd parent