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

Not an answer, per se, but an observation that seems to have been overlooked.

The description for carat ranges:

see: https://github.com/npm/node-semver#caret-ranges-123-025-004

Allows changes that do not modify the left-most non-zero digit in the [major, minor, patch] tuple.

Means that ^10.2.3 matches 10.2.3 <= v < 20.0.0

I don't think that's what they meant. Pulling in versions 11.x.x through 19.x.x will break your code.

I think they meant left most non-zero number field. There is nothing in SemVer that requires number-fields to be single-digit.