Merge pull request #787 from borekb/patch-1

Ancestry references: note about caret for Windows users

Author: ben

book/07-git-tools/sections/revision-selection.asc

@@ -178,7 +178,7 @@ Running `git show HEAD@{2.months.ago}` will work only if you cloned the project
 ==== Ancestry References
 
 The other main way to specify a commit is via its ancestry.
-If you place a `^` at the end of a reference, Git resolves it to mean the parent of that commit.
+If you place a `^` (caret) at the end of a reference, Git resolves it to mean the parent of that commit.
 Suppose you look at the history of your project:
 
 [source,console]
@@ -207,6 +207,21 @@ Date:   Thu Dec 11 15:08:43 2008 -0800
     Merge commit 'phedders/rdocs'
 ----
 
+[NOTE]
+.Escaping the caret on Windows
+====
+
+On Windows in `cmd.exe`, `^` is a special character and needs to be treated differently. You can either double it or put the commit reference in quotes:
+
+[source,console]
+----
+$ git show HEAD^     # will NOT work on Windows
+$ git show HEAD^^    # OK
+$ git show "HEAD^"   # OK
+----
+
+====
+
 You can also specify a number after the `^` – for example, `d921970^2` means ``the second parent of d921970.''
 This syntax is only useful for merge commits, which have more than one parent.
 The first parent is the branch you were on when you merged, and the second is the commit on the branch that you merged in:
@@ -228,7 +243,7 @@ Date:   Wed Dec 10 22:22:03 2008 +0000
     Some rdoc changes
 ----
 
-The other main ancestry specification is the `~`.
+The other main ancestry specification is the `~` (tilde).
 This also refers to the first parent, so `HEAD~` and `HEAD^` are equivalent.
 The difference becomes apparent when you specify a number.
 `HEAD~2` means ``the first parent of the first parent,'' or ``the grandparent'' – it traverses the first parents the number of times you specify.