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

Tilde (~)

major version is fixed, minor version is fixed, matches any build number

"express": "~4.13.3" 

~4.13.3 means it will check for 4.13.x where x is anything and 4.14.0

Caret (^)

major version is fixed, matches any minor version, matches any build number

"supertest": "^3.0.0"

^3.0.0 means it will check for 3.x.x where x is anything